Saturday, August 15th. The sea still retains its uniform monotony. The
same leaden hue, the same eternal glare from above. No indication of
land being in sight. The horizon appears to retreat before us, more and
more as we advance.

My head, still dull and heavy from the effects of my extraordinary
dream, which I cannot as yet banish from my mind.

The Professor, who has not dreamed, is, however, in one of his morose
and unaccountable humors. Spends his time in scanning the horizon, at
every point of the compass. His telescope is raised every moment to his
eyes, and when he finds nothing to give any clue to our whereabouts, he
assumes a Napoleonic attitude and walks anxiously.

I remarked that my uncle, the Professor, had a strong tendency to resume
his old impatient character, and I could not but make a note of this
disagreeable circumstance in my journal. I saw clearly that it had
required all the influence of my danger and suffering, to extract from
him one scintillation of humane feeling. Now that I was quite recovered,
his original nature had conquered and obtained the upper hand.

And, after all, what had he to be angry and annoyed about, now more than
at any other time? Was not the journey being accomplished under the most
favorable circumstances? Was not the raft progressing with the most
marvelous rapidity?

What, then, could be the matter? After one or two preliminary hems, I
determined to inquire.

"You seem uneasy, Uncle," said I, when for about the hundredth time he
put down his telescope and walked up and down, muttering to himself.

"No, I am not uneasy," he replied in a dry harsh tone, "by no means."

"Perhaps I should have said impatient," I replied, softening the force
of my remark.

"Enough to make me so, I think."

"And yet we are advancing at a rate seldom attained by a raft," I
remarked.

"What matters that?" cried my uncle. "I am not vexed at the rate we go
at, but I am annoyed to find the sea so much vaster than I expected."

I then recollected that the Professor, before our departure, had
estimated the length of this subterranean ocean as at most about thirty
leagues. Now we had traveled at least over thrice that distance without
discovering any trace of the distant shore. I began to understand my
uncle's anger.

"We are not going down," suddenly exclaimed the Professor. "We are not
progressing with our great discoveries. All this is utter loss of time.
After all, I did not come from home to undertake a party of pleasure.
This voyage on a raft over a pond annoys and wearies me."

He called this adventurous journey a party of pleasure, and this great
inland sea a pond!

"But," argued I, "if we have followed the route indicated by the great
Saknussemm, we cannot be going far wrong."

"'That is the question,' as the great, the immortal Shakespeare, has it.
Are we following the route indicated by that wondrous sage? Did
Saknussemm ever fall in with this great sheet of water? If he did, did
he cross it? I begin to fear that the rivulet we adopted for a guide has
led us wrong."

"In any case, we can never regret having come thus far. It is worth the
whole journey to have enjoyed this magnificent spectacle--it is
something to have seen."

"I care nothing about seeing, nor about magnificent spectacles. I came
down into the interior of the earth with an object, and that object I
mean to attain. Don't talk to me about admiring scenery, or any other
sentimental trash."

After this I thought it well to hold my tongue, and allow the Professor
to bite his lips until the blood came, without further remark.

At six o'clock in the evening, our matter-of-fact guide, Hans, asked for
his week's salary, and receiving his three rix-dollars, put them
carefully in his pocket. He was perfectly contented and satisfied.

Sunday, August 16th. Nothing new to record. The same weather as before.
The wind has a slight tendency to freshen up, with signs of an
approaching gale. When I awoke, My first observation was in regard to
the intensity of the light. I keep on fearing, day after day, that the
extraordinary electric phenomenon should become first obscured, and then
go wholly out, leaving us in total darkness. Nothing, however, of the
kind occurs. The shadow of the raft, its mast and sails, is clearly
distinguished on the surface of the water.

This wondrous sea is, after all, infinite in its extent. It must be
quite as wide as the Mediterranean--or perhaps even as the great
Atlantic Ocean. Why, after all, should it not be so?

My uncle has on more than one occasion, tried deep-sea soundings. He
tied the cross of one of our heaviest crowbars to the extremity of a
cord, which he allowed to run out to the extent of two hundred fathoms.
We had the greatest difficulty in hoisting in our novel kind of lead.

When the crowbar was finally dragged on board, Hans called my attention
to some singular marks upon its surface. The piece of iron looked as if
it had been crushed between two very hard substances.

I looked at our worthy guide with an inquiring glance.

"Tander," said he.

Of course I was at a loss to understand. I turned round towards my
uncle, absorbed in gloomy reflections. I had little wish to disturb him
from his reverie. I accordingly turned once more towards our worthy
Icelander.

Hans very quietly and significantly opened his mouth once or twice, as
if in the act of biting, and in this way made me understand his meaning.

"Teeth!" cried I, with stupefaction, as I examined the bar of iron with
more attention.

Yes. There can be no doubt about the matter. The indentations on the bar
of iron are the marks of teeth! What jaws must the owner of such molars
be possessed of! Have well then, come upon a monster of unknown species,
which still exists within the vast waste of waters--a monster more
voracious than a shark, more terrible and bulky than the whale? I am
unable to withdraw my eyes from the bar of iron, actually half crushed!

Is, then, my dream about to come true--a dread and terrible reality?

All day my thoughts were bent upon these speculations, and my
imagination scarcely regained a degree of calmness and power of
reflection until after a sleep of many hours.

This day, as on other Sundays, we observed as a day of rest and pious
meditation.

Monday, August 17th. I have been trying to realize from memory the
particular instincts of those antediluvian animals of the secondary
period, which succeeding to the mollusca, to the crustacea, and to the
fish, preceded the appearance of the race of mammifers. The generation
of reptiles then reigned supreme upon the earth. These hideous monsters
ruled everything in the seas of the secondary period, which formed the
strata of which the Jura mountains are composed. Nature had endowed them
with perfect organization. What a gigantic structure was theirs; what
vast and prodigious strength they possessed!

The existing saurians, which include all such reptiles as lizards,
crocodiles, and alligators, even the largest and most formidable of
their class, are but feeble imitations of their mighty sires, the
animals of ages long ago. If there were giants in the days of old, there
were also gigantic animals.

I shuddered as I evolved from my mind the idea and recollection of these
awful monsters. No eye of man had seen them in the flesh. They took
their walks abroad upon the face of the earth thousands of ages before
man came into existence, and their fossil bones, discovered in the
limestone, have allowed us to reconstruct them anatomically, and thus to
get some faint idea of their colossal formation.

I recollect once seeing in the great Museum of Hamburg the skeleton of
one of these wonderful saurians. It measured no less than thirty feet
from the nose to the tail. Am I, then, an inhabitant of the earth of the
present day, destined to find myself face to face with a representative
of this antediluvian family? I can scarcely believe it possible; I can
hardly believe it true. And yet these marks of powerful teeth upon the
bar of iron! Can there be a doubt from their shape that the bite is the
bite of a crocodile?

My eyes stare wildly and with terror upon the subterranean sea. Every
moment I expect one of these monsters to rise from its vast cavernous
depths.

I fancy that the worthy Professor in some measure shares my notions, if
not my fears, for, after an attentive examination of the crowbar, he
cast his eyes rapidly over the mighty and mysterious ocean.

"What could possess him to leave the land," I thought, "as if the depth
of this water was of any importance to us. No doubt he has disturbed
some terrible monster in his watery home, and perhaps we may pay dearly
for our temerity."

Anxious to be prepared for the worst, I examined our weapons, and saw
that they were in a fit state for use. My uncle looked on at me and
nodded his head approvingly. He, too, has noticed what we have to fear.

Already the uplifting of the waters on the surface indicates that
something is in motion below. The danger approaches. It comes nearer and
nearer. It behooves us to be on the watch.

Tuesday, August 18th. Evening came at last, the hour when the desire for
sleep caused our eyelids to be heavy. Night there is not, properly
speaking, in this place, any more than there is in summer in the arctic
regions. Hans, however, is immovable at the rudder. When he snatches a
moment of rest I really cannot say. I take advantage of his vigilance to
take some little repose.

But two hours after I was awakened from a heavy sleep by an awful shock.
The raft appeared to have struck upon a sunken rock. It was lifted right
out of the water by some wondrous and mysterious power, and then started
off twenty fathoms distant.

"Eh, what is it?" cried my uncle starting up. "Are we shipwrecked, or
what?"

Hans raised his hand and pointed to where, about two hundred yards off,
a large black mass was moving up and down.

I looked with awe. My worst fears were realized.

"It is a colossal monster!" I cried, clasping my hands.

"Yes," cried the agitated Professor, "and there yonder is a huge sea
lizard of terrible size and shape."

"And farther on behold a prodigious crocodile. Look at his hideous jaws,
and that row of monstrous teeth. Ha! he has gone."

"A whale! a whale!" shouted the Professor, "I can see her enormous fins.
See, see, how she blows air and water!"

Two liquid columns rose to a vast height above the level of the sea,
into which they fell with a terrific crash, waking up the echoes of that
awful place. We stood still--surprised, stupefied, terror-stricken at
the sight of this group of fearful marine monsters, more hideous in the
reality than in my dream. They were of supernatural dimensions; the very
smallest of the whole party could with ease have crushed our raft and
ourselves with a single bite.

Hans, seizing the rudder which had flown out of his hand, puts it hard
aweather in order to escape from such dangerous vicinity; but no sooner
does he do so, than he finds he is flying from Scylla to Charybdis. To
leeward is a turtle about forty feet wide, and a serpent quite as long,
with an enormous and hideous head peering from out the waters.

Look which way we will, it is impossible for us to fly. The fearful
reptiles advanced upon us; they turned and twisted about the raft with
awful rapidity. They formed around our devoted vessel a series of
concentric circles. I took up my rifle in desperation. But what effect
can a rifle ball produce upon the armor scales with which the bodies of
these horrid monsters are covered?

We remain still and dumb from utter horror. They advance upon us, nearer
and nearer. Our fate appears certain, fearful and terrible. On one side
the mighty crocodile, on the other the great sea serpent. The rest of
the fearful crowd of marine prodigies have plunged beneath the briny
waves and disappeared!

I am about to fire at any risk and try the effect of a shot. Hans, the
guide, however, interfered by a sign to check me. The two hideous and
ravenous monsters passed within fifty fathoms of the raft, and then made
a rush at one another--their fury and rage preventing them from seeing
us.

The combat commenced. We distinctly made out every action of the two
hideous monsters.

But to my excited imagination the other animals appeared about to take
part in the fierce and deadly struggle--the monster, the whale, the
lizard, and the turtle. I distinctly saw them every moment. I pointed
them out to the Icelander. But he only shook his head.

"Tva," he said.

"What--two only does he say. Surely he is mistaken," I cried in a tone
of wonder.

"He is quite right," replied my uncle coolly and philosophically,
examining the terrible duel with his telescope and speaking as if he
were in a lecture room.

"How can that be?"

"Yes, it is so. The first of these hideous monsters has the snout of a
porpoise, the head of a lizard, the teeth of a crocodile; and it is this
that has deceived us. It is the most fearful of all antediluvian
reptiles, the world--renowned Ichthyosaurus or great fish lizard."

"And the other?"

"The other is a monstrous serpent, concealed under the hard vaulted
shell of the turtle, the terrible enemy of its fearful rival, the
Plesiosaurus, or sea crocodile."

Hans was quite right. The two monsters only, disturbed the surface of
the sea!

At last have mortal eyes gazed upon two reptiles of the great primitive
ocean! I see the flaming red eyes of the Ichthyosaurus, each as big, or
bigger than a man's head. Nature in its infinite wisdom had gifted this
wondrous marine animal with an optical apparatus of extreme power,
capable of resisting the pressure of the heavy layers of water which
rolled over him in the depths of the ocean where he usually fed. It has
by some authors truly been called the whale of the saurian race, for it
is as big and quick in its motions as our king of the seas. This one
measures not less than a hundred feet in length, and I can form some
idea of his girth when I see him lift his prodigious tail out of the
waters. His jaw is of awful size and strength, and according to the
best-informed naturalists, it does not contain less than a hundred and
eighty-two teeth.

The other was the mighty Plesiosaurus, a serpent with a cylindrical
trunk, with a short stumpy tail, with fins like a bank of oars in a
Roman galley.

Its whole body covered by a carapace or shell, and its neck, as flexible
as that of a swan, rose more than thirty feet above the waves, a tower
of animated flesh!

These animals attacked one another with inconceivable fury. Such a
combat was never seen before by mortal eyes, and to us who did see it,
it appeared more like the phantasmagoric creation of a dream than
anything else. They raised mountains of water, which dashed in spray
over the raft, already tossed to and fro by the waves. Twenty times we
seemed on the point of being upset and hurled headlong into the waves.
Hideous hisses appeared to shake the gloomy granite roof of that mighty
cavern--hisses which carried terror to our hearts. The awful combatants
held each other in a tight embrace. I could not make out one from the
other. Still the combat could not last forever; and woe unto us,
whichsoever became the victor.

One hour, two hours, three hours passed away, without any decisive
result. The struggle continued with the same deadly tenacity, but
without apparent result. The deadly opponents now approached, now drew
away from the raft. Once or twice we fancied they were about to leave us
altogether, but instead of that, they came nearer and nearer.

We crouched on the raft ready to fire at them at a moment's notice, poor
as the prospect of hurting or terrifying them was. Still we were
determined not to perish without a struggle.

Suddenly the Ichthyosaurus and the Plesiosaurus disappeared beneath the
waves, leaving behind them a maelstrom in the midst of the sea. We were
nearly drawn down by the indraft of the water!

Several minutes elapsed before anything was again seen. Was this
wonderful combat to end in the depths of the ocean? Was the last act of
this terrible drama to take place without spectators?

It was impossible for us to say.

Suddenly, at no great distance from us, an enormous mass rises out of
the waters--the head of the great Plesiosaurus. The terrible monster is
now wounded unto death. I can see nothing now of his enormous body. All
that could be distinguished was his serpent-like neck, which he twisted
and curled in all the agonies of death. Now he struck the waters with it
as if it had been a gigantic whip, and then again wriggled like a worm
cut in two. The water was spurted up to a great distance in all
directions. A great portion of it swept over our raft and nearly blinded
us. But soon the end of the beast approached nearer and nearer; his
movements slackened visibly; his contortions almost ceased; and at last
the body of the mighty snake lay an inert, dead mass on the surface of
the now calm and placid waters.

As for the Ichthyosaurus, has he gone down to his mighty cavern under
the sea to rest, or will he reappear to destroy us?

This question remained unanswered. And we had breathing time.

Wednesday, August 19th. Fortunately the wind, which for the present
blows with some violence, has allowed us to escape from the scene of the
unparalleled and extraordinary struggle. Hans with his usual
imperturbable calm remained at the helm. My uncle, who for a short time
had been withdrawn from his absorbing reveries by the novel incidents of
this sea fight, fell back again apparently into a brown study. His eyes
were fixed impatiently on the widespread ocean.

Our voyage now became monotonous and uniform. Dull as it has become, I
have no desire to have it broken by any repetition of the perils and
adventures of yesterday.

Thursday, August 20th. The wind is now N. N. E., and blows very
irregularly. It has changed to fitful gusts. The temperature is
exceedingly high. We are now progressing at the average rate of about
ten miles and a half per hour.

About twelve o'clock a distant sound as of thunder fell upon our ears. I
make a note of the fact without even venturing a suggestion as to its
cause. It was one continued roar as of a sea falling over mighty rocks.

"Far off in the distance," said the Professor dogmatically, "there is
some rock or some island against which the seal lashed to fury by the
wind, is breaking violently."

Hans, without saying a word, clambered to the top of the mast, but could
make out nothing. The ocean was level in every direction as far as the
eye could reach.

Three hours passed away without any sign to indicate what might be
before us. The sound began to assume that of a mighty cataract.

I expressed my opinion on this point strongly to my uncle. He merely
shook his head. I, however, am strongly impressed by a conviction that I
am not wrong. Are we advancing towards some mighty waterfall which shall
cast us into the abyss? Probably this mode of descending into the abyss
may be agreeable to the Professor, because it would be something like
the vertical descent he is so eager to make. I entertain a very
different opinion.

Whatever be the truth, it is certain that not many leagues distant there
must be some very extraordinary phenomenon, for as we advance the roar
becomes something mighty and stupendous. Is it in the water, or in the
air?

I cast hasty glances aloft at the suspended vapors, and I seek to
penetrate their mighty depths. But the vault above is tranquil. The
clouds, which are now elevated to the very summit, appear utterly still
and motionless, and completely lost in the irradiation of electric
light. It is necessary, therefore, to seek for the cause of this
phenomenon elsewhere.

I examine the horizon, now perfectly calm, pure, and free from all haze.
Its aspect still remains unchanged. But if this awful noise proceeds
from a cataract--if, so to speak in plain English, this vast interior
ocean is precipitated into a lower basin--if these tremendous roars are
produced by the noise of falling waters, the current would increase in
activity, and its increasing swiftness would give me some idea of the
extent of the peril with which we are menaced. I consult the current. It
simply does not exist: there is no such thing. An empty bottle cast into
the water lies to leeward without motion.

About four o'clock Hans rises, clambers up the mast, and reaches the
truck itself. From this elevated position his looks are cast around.
They take in a vast circumference of the ocean. At last, his eyes remain
fixed. His face expresses no astonishment, but his eyes slightly dilate.

"He has seen something at last," cried my uncle.

"I think so," I replied.

Hans came down, stood beside us, and pointed with his right hand to the
south.

"Der nere," he said.

"There," replied my uncle.

And seizing his telescope, he looked at it with great attention for
about a minute, which to me appeared an age. I knew not what to think or
expect.

"Yes, yes," he cried in a tone of considerable surprise, "there it is."

"What?" I asked.

"A tremendous spurt of water rising out of the waves."

"Some other marine monster," I cried, already alarmed.

"Perhaps."

"Then let us steer more to the westward, for we know what we have to
expect from antediluvian animals," was my eager reply.

"Go ahead," said my uncle.

I turned towards Hans. Hans was at the tiller steering with his usual
imperturbable calm.

Nevertheless, if from the distance which separated us from this
creature, a distance which must be estimated at not less than a dozen
leagues, one could see the column of water spurting from the blow-hole
of the great animal, his dimensions must be something preternatural. To
fly is, therefore, the course to be suggested by ordinary prudence. But
we have not come into that part of the world to be prudent. Such is my
uncle's determination.

We, accordingly, continued to advance. The nearer we come, the loftier
is the spouting water. What monster can fill himself with such huge
volumes of water, and then unceasingly spout them out in such lofty
jets?

At eight o'clock in the evening, reckoning as above ground, where there
is day and night, we are not more than two leagues from the mighty
beast. Its long, black, enormous, mountainous body, lies on the top of
the water like an island. But then sailors have been said to have gone
ashore on sleeping whales, mistaking them for land. Is it illusion, or
is it fear? Its length cannot be less than a thousand fathoms. What,
then, is this cetaceous monster of which no Cuvier ever thought?

It is quite motionless and presents the appearance of sleep. The sea
seems unable to lift him upwards; it is rather the waves which break on
his huge and gigantic frame. The waterspout, rising to a height of five
hundred feet, breaks in spray with a dull, sullen roar.

We advance, like senseless lunatics, towards this mighty mass.

I honestly confess that I was abjectly afraid. I declared that I would
go no farther. I threatened in my terror to cut the sheet of the sail. I
attacked the Professor with considerable acrimony, calling him
foolhardy, mad, I know not what. He made no answer.

Suddenly the imperturbable Hans once more pointed his finger to the
menacing object:

"Holme!"

"An island!" cried my uncle.

"An island?" I replied, shrugging my shoulders at this poor attempt at
deception.

"Of course it is," cried my uncle, bursting into a loud and joyous
laugh.

"But the waterspout?"

"Geyser," said Hans.

"Yes, of course--a geyser," replied my uncle, still laughing, "a geyser
like those common in Iceland. Jets like this are the great wonders of
the country."

At first I would not allow that I had been so grossly deceived. What
could be more ridiculous than to have taken an island for a marine
monster? But kick as one may, one must yield to evidence, and I was
finally convinced of my error. It was nothing, after all, but a natural
phenomenon.

As we approached nearer and nearer, the dimensions of the liquid sheaf
of waters became truly grand and stupendous. The island had, at a
distance, presented the appearance of an enormous whale, whose head rose
high above the waters. The geyser, a word the Icelanders pronounce
geysir, and which signifies fury, rose majestically from its summit.
Dull detonations are heard every now and then, and the enormous jet,
taken as it were with sudden fury, shakes its plume of vapor, and bounds
into the first layer of the clouds. It is alone. Neither spurts of vapor
nor hot springs surround it, and the whole volcanic power of that region
is concentrated in one sublime column. The rays of electric light mix
with this dazzling sheaf, every drop as it falls assuming the prismatic
colors of the rainbow.

"Let us go on shore," said the Professor, after some minutes of silence.

It is necessary, however, to take great precaution, in order to avoid
the weight of falling waters, which would cause the raft to founder in
an instant. Hans, however, steers admirably, and brings us to the other
extremity of the island.

I was the first to leap on the rock. My uncle followed, while the
eider-duck hunter remained still, like a man above any childish sources
of astonishment. We were now walking on granite mixed with siliceous
sandstone; the soil shivered under our feet like the sides of boilers in
which over-heated steam is forcibly confined. It is burning. We soon
came in sight of the little central basin from which rose the geyser. I
plunged a thermometer into the water which ran bubbling from the centre,
and it marked a heat of a hundred and sixty-three degrees!

This water, therefore, came from some place where the heat was intense.
This was singularly in contradiction with the theories of Professor
Hardwigg. I could not help telling him my opinion on the subject.

"Well," said he sharply, "and what does this prove against my doctrine?"

"Nothing," replied I dryly, seeing that I was running my head against a
foregone conclusion.

Nevertheless, I am compelled to confess that until now we have been most
remarkably fortunate, and that this voyage is being accomplished in most
favorable conditions of temperature; but it appears evident, in fact,
certain, that we shall sooner or later arrive at one of those regions
where the central heat will reach its utmost limits, and will go far
beyond all the possible gradations of thermometers.

Visions of the Hades of the ancients, believed to be in the centre of
the earth, floated through my imagination.

We shall, however, see what we shall see. That is the Professor's
favorite phrase now. Having christened the volcanic island by the name
of his nephew, the leader of the expedition turned away and gave the
signal for embarkation.

I stood still, however, for some minutes, gazing upon the magnificent
geyser. I soon was able to perceive that the upward tendency of the
water was irregular; now it diminished in intensity, and then, suddenly,
it regained new vigor, which I attributed to the variation of the
pressure of the accumulated vapors in its reservoir.

At last we took our departure, going carefully round the projecting, and
rather dangerous, rocks of the southern side. Hans had taken advantage
of this brief halt to repair the raft.

Before we took our final departure from the island, however, I made some
observations to calculate the distance we had gone over, and I put them
down in my journal. Since we left Port Gretchen, we had traveled two
hundred and seventy leagues--more than eight hundred miles--on this
great inland sea; we were, therefore, six hundred and twenty leagues
from Iceland, and exactly under England.

Friday, August 21st. This morning the magnificent geyser had wholly
disappeared. The wind had freshened up, and we were fast leaving the
neighborhood of Henry's Island. Even the roaring sound of the mighty
column was lost to the ear.

The weather, if, under the circumstances, we may use such an expression,
is about to change very suddenly. The atmosphere is being gradually
loaded with vapors, which carry with them the electricity formed by the
constant evaporation of the saline waters; the clouds are slowly but
sensibly falling towards the sea, and are assuming a dark-olive texture;
the electric rays can scarcely pierce through the opaque curtain which
has fallen like a drop scene before this wondrous theater, on the stage
of which another and terrible drama is soon to be enacted. This time it
is no fight of animals; it is the fearful battle of the elements.

I feel that I am very peculiarly influenced, as all creatures are on
land when a deluge is about to take place.

The cumuli, a perfectly oval kind of cloud, piled upon the south,
presented a most awful and sinister appearance, with the pitiless aspect
often seen before a storm. The air is extremely heavy; the sea is
comparatively calm.

In the distance, the clouds have assumed the appearance of enormous
balls of cotton, or rather pods, piled one above the other in
picturesque confusion. By degrees, they appear to swell out, break, and
gain in number what they lose in grandeur; their heaviness is so great
that they are unable to lift themselves from the horizon; but under the
influence of the upper currents of air, they are gradually broken up,
become much darker, and then present the appearance of one single layer
of a formidable character; now and then a lighter cloud, still lit up
from above, rebounds upon this grey carpet, and is lost in the opaque
mass.

There can be no doubt that the entire atmosphere is saturated with
electric fluid; I am myself wholly impregnated; my hairs literally stand
on end as if under the influence of a galvanic battery. If one of my
companions ventured to touch me, I think he would receive rather a
violent and unpleasant shock.

About ten o'clock in the morning, the symptoms of the storm became more
thorough and decisive; the wind appeared to soften down as if to take
breath for a renewed attack; the vast funereal pall above us looked like
a huge bag--like the cave of AEolus, in which the storm was collecting
its forces for the attack.

I tried all I could not to believe in the menacing signs of the sky, and
yet I could not avoid saying, as it were involuntarily:

"I believe we are going to have bad weather."

The Professor made me no answer. He was in a horrible, in a detestable
humor--to see the ocean stretching interminably before his eyes. On
hearing my words he simply shrugged his shoulders.

"We shall have a tremendous storm," I said again, pointing to the
horizon. "These clouds are falling lower and lower upon the sea, as if
to crush it."

A great silence prevailed. The wind wholly ceased. Nature assumed a dead
calm, and ceased to breathe. Upon the mast, where I noticed a sort of
slight ignis fatuus, the sail hangs in loose heavy folds. The raft is
motionless in the midst of a dark heavy sea--without undulation, without
motion. It is as still as glass. But as we are making no progress, what
is the use of keeping up the sail, which may be the cause of our
perdition if the tempest should suddenly strike us without warning.

"Let us lower the sail," I said, "it is only an act of common prudence."

"No--no," cried my uncle, in an exasperated tone, "a hundred times, no.
Let the wind strike us and do its worst, let the storm sweep us away
where it will--only let me see the glimmer of some coast--of some rocky
cliffs, even if they dash our raft into a thousand pieces. No! keep up
the sail--no matter what happens."

These words were scarcely uttered when the southern horizon underwent a
sudden and violent change. The long accumulated vapors were resolved
into water, and the air required to fill up the void produced became a
wild and raging tempest.

It came from the most distant corners of the mighty cavern. It raged
from every point of the compass. It roared; it yelled; it shrieked with
glee as of demons let loose. The darkness increased and became indeed
darkness visible.

The raft rose and fell with the storm, and bounded over the waves. My
uncle was cast headlong upon the deck. I with great difficulty dragged
myself towards him. He was holding on with might and main to the end of
a cable, and appeared to gaze with pleasure and delight at the spectacle
of the unchained elements.

Hans never moved a muscle. His long hair driven hither and thither by
the tempest and scattered wildly over his motionless face, gave him a
most extraordinary appearance--for every single hair was illuminated by
little sparkling sprigs.

His countenance presents the extraordinary appearance of an antediluvian
man, a true contemporary of the Megatherium.

Still the mast holds good against the storm. The sail spreads out and
fills like a soap bubble about to burst. The raft rushes on at a pace
impossible to estimate, but still less swiftly than the body of water
displaced beneath it, the rapidity of which may be seen by the lines
which fly right and left in the wake.

"The sail, the sail!" I cried, making a trumpet of my hands, and then
endeavoring to lower it.

"Let it alone!" said my uncle, more exasperated than ever.

"Nej," said Hans, gently shaking his head.

Nevertheless, the rain formed a roaring cataract before this horizon of
which we were in search, and to which we were rushing like madmen.

But before this wilderness of waters reached us, the mighty veil of
cloud was torn in twain; the sea began to foam wildly; and the
electricity, produced by some vast and extraordinary chemical action in
the upper layer of cloud, is brought into play. To the fearful claps of
thunder are added dazzling flashes of lightning, such as I had never
seen. The flashes crossed one another, hurled from every side; while the
thunder came pealing like an echo. The mass of vapor becomes
incandescent; the hailstones which strike the metal of our boots and our
weapons are actually luminous; the waves as they rise appear to be
fire-eating monsters, beneath which seethes an intense fire, their
crests surmounted by combs of flame.

My eyes are dazzled, blinded by the intensity of light, my ears are
deafened by the awful roar of the elements. I am compelled to hold onto
the mast, which bends like a reed beneath the violence of the storm, to
which none ever before seen by mariners bore any resemblance.

* * * * *

Here my traveling notes become very incomplete, loose and vague. I have
only been able to make out one or two fugitive observations, jotted down
in a mere mechanical way. But even their brevity, even their obscurity,
show the emotions which overcame me.

* * * * *

Sunday, August 23rd. Where have we got to? In what region are we
wandering? We are still carried forward with inconceivable rapidity.

The night has been fearful, something not to be described. The storm
shows no signs of cessation. We exist in the midst of an uproar which
has no name. The detonations as of artillery are incessant. Our ears
literally bleed. We are unable to exchange a word, or hear each other
speak.

The lightning never ceases to flash for a single instant. I can see the
zigzags after a rapid dart strike the arched roof of this mightiest of
mighty vaults. If it were to give way and fall upon us! Other lightnings
plunge their forked streaks in every direction, and take the form of
globes of fire, which explode like bombshells over a beleaguered city.
The general crash and roar do not apparently increase; it has already
gone far beyond what human ear can appreciate. If all the powder
magazines in the world were to explode together, it would be impossible
for us to hear worse noise.

There is a constant emission of light from the storm clouds; the
electric matter is incessantly released; evidently the gaseous
principles of the air are out of order; innumerable columns of water
rush up like waterspouts, and fall back upon the surface of the ocean in
foam.

Whither are we going? My uncle still lies at full length upon the raft,
without speaking--without taking any note of time.

The heat increases. I look at the thermometer, to my surprise it
indicates--The exact figure is here rubbed out in my manuscript.

Monday, August 24th. This terrible storm will never end. Why should not
this state of the atmosphere, so dense and murky, once modified, again
remain definitive?

We are utterly broken and harassed by fatigue. Hans remains just as
usual. The raft runs to the southeast invariably. We have now already
run two hundred leagues from the newly discovered island.

About twelve o'clock the storm became worse than ever. We are obliged
now to fasten every bit of cargo tightly on the deck of the raft, or
everything would be swept away. We make ourselves fast, too, each man
lashing the other. The waves drive over us, so that several times we are
actually under water.

We had been under the painful necessity of abstaining from speech for
three days and three nights. We opened our mouths, we moved our lips,
but no sound came. Even when we placed our mouths to each other's ears
it was the same.

The wind carried the voice away.

My uncle once contrived to get his head close to mine after several
almost vain endeavors. He appeared to my nearly exhausted senses to
articulate some word. I had a notion, more from intuition than anything
else, that he said to me, "We are lost."

I took out my notebook, from which under the most desperate
circumstances I never parted, and wrote a few words as legibly as I
could:

"Take in sail."

With a deep sigh he nodded his head and acquiesced.

His head had scarcely time to fall back in the position from which he
had momentarily raised it than a disk or ball of fire appeared on the
very edge of the raft--our devoted, our doomed craft. The mast and sail
are carried away bodily, and I see them swept away to a prodigious
height like a kite.

We were frozen, actually shivered with terror. The ball of fire, half
white, half azure-colored, about the size of a ten-inch bombshell, moved
along, turning with prodigious rapidity to leeward of the storm. It ran
about here, there, and everywhere, it clambered up one of the bulwarks
of the raft, it leaped upon the sack of provisions, and then finally
descended lightly, fell like a football and landed on our powder barrel.

Horrible situation. An explosion of course was now inevitable.

By heaven's mercy, it was not so.

The dazzling disk moved on one side, it approached Hans, who looked at
it with singular fixity; then it approached my uncle, who cast himself
on his knees to avoid it; it came towards me, as I stood pale and
shuddering in the dazzling light and heat; it pirouetted round my feet,
which I endeavored to withdraw.

An odor of nitrous gas filled the whole air; it penetrated to the
throat, to the lungs. I felt ready to choke.

Why is it that I cannot withdraw my feet? Are they riveted to the
flooring of the raft?

No.

The fall of the electric globe has turned all the iron on board into
loadstones--the instruments, the tools, the arms are clanging together
with awful and horrible noise; the nails of my heavy boots adhere
closely to the plate of iron incrustated in the wood. I cannot withdraw
my foot.

It is the old story again of the mountain of adamant.

At last, by a violent and almost superhuman effort, I tear it away just
as the ball which is still executing its gyratory motions is about to
run round it and drag me with it--if--

Oh, what intense stupendous light! The globe of fire bursts--we are
enveloped in cascades of living fire, which flood the space around with
luminous matter.

Then all went out and darkness once more fell upon the deep! I had just
time to see my uncle once more cast apparently senseless on the flooring
of the raft, Hans at the helm, "spitting fire" under the influence of
the electricity which seemed to have gone through him.

Whither are we going, I ask? and echo answers, Whither?

.............

Tuesday, August 25th. I have just come out of a long fainting fit. The
awful and hideous storm still continues; the lightning has increased in
vividness, and pours out its fiery wrath like a brood of serpents let
loose in the atmosphere.

Are we still upon the sea? Yes, and being carried along with incredible
velocity.

We have passed under England, under the Channel, under France, probably
under the whole extent of Europe.

* * * * *

Another awful clamor in the distance. This time it is certain that the
sea is breaking upon the rocks at no great distance. Then--

..............

..............

Here ends what I call "My Journal" of our voyage on board the raft,
which journal was happily saved from the wreck. I proceed with my
narrative as I did before I commenced my daily notes.

What happened when the terrible shock took place, when the raft was cast
upon the rocky shore, it would be impossible for me now to say. I felt
myself precipitated violently into the boiling waves, and if I escaped
from a certain and cruel death, it was wholly owing to the determination
of the faithful Hans, who, clutching me by the arm, saved me from the
yawning abyss.

The courageous Icelander then carried me in his powerful arms, far out
of the reach of the waves, and laid me down upon a burning expanse of
sand, where I found myself some time afterwards in the company of my
uncle, the Professor.

Then he quietly returned towards the fatal rocks, against which the
furious waves were beating, in order to save any stray waifs from the
wreck. This man was always practical and thoughtful. I could not utter a
word; I was quite overcome with emotion; my whole body was broken and
bruised with fatigue; it took hours before I was anything like myself.

Meanwhile, there fell a fearful deluge of rain, drenching us to the
skin. Its very violence, however, proclaimed the approaching end of the
storm. Some overhanging rocks afforded us a slight protection from the
torrents.

Under this shelter, Hans prepared some food, which, however, I was
unable to touch; and, exhausted by the three weary days and nights of
watching, we fell into a deep and painful sleep. My dreams were fearful,
but at last exhausted nature asserted her supremacy, and I slumbered.

Next day when I awoke the change was magical. The weather was
magnificent. Air and sea, as if by mutual consent, had regained their
serenity. Every trace of the storm, even the faintest, had disappeared.
I was saluted on my awakening by the first joyous tones I had heard from
the Professor for many a day. His gaiety, indeed, was something
terrible.

"Well, my lad," he cried, rubbing his hands together, "have you slept
soundly?"

Might it not have been supposed that we were in the old house on the
Konigstrasse; that I had just come down quietly to my breakfast; and
that my marriage with Gretchen was to take place that very day? My
uncle's coolness was exasperating.

Alas, considering how the tempest had driven us in an easterly
direction, we had passed under the whole of Germany, under the city of
Hamburg where I had been so happy, under the very street which contained
all I loved and cared for in the world.

It was a positive fact that I was only separated from her by a distance
of forty leagues. But these forty leagues were of hard, impenetrable
granite!

All these dreary and miserable reflections passed through my mind,
before I attempted to answer my uncle's question.

"Why, what is the matter?" he cried. "Cannot you say whether you have
slept well or not?"

"I have slept very well," was my reply, "but every bone in my body
aches. I suppose that will lead to nothing."

"Nothing at all, my boy. It is only the result of the fatigue of the
last few days--that is all."

"You appear--if I may be allowed to say so--to be very jolly this
morning," I said.

"Delighted, my dear boy, delighted. Was never happier in my life. We
have at last reached the wished-for port."

"The end of our expedition?" cried I, in a tone of considerable
surprise.

"No; but to the confines of that sea which I began to fear would never
end, but go round the whole world. We will now tranquilly resume our
journey by land, and once again endeavor to dive into the centre of the
earth."

"My dear uncle," I began, in a hesitating kind of way, "allow me to ask
you one question."

"Certainly, Harry; a dozen if you think proper."

"One will suffice. How about getting back?" I asked.

"How about getting back? What a question to ask. We have not as yet
reached the end of our journey."

"I know that. All I want to know is how you propose we shall manage the
return voyage?"

"In the most simple manner in the world," said the imperturbable
Professor. "Once we reach the exact centre of this sphere, either we
shall find a new road by which to ascend to the surface, or we shall
simply turn round and go back by the way we came. I have every reason to
believe that while we are traveling forward, it will not close behind
us."

"Then one of the first matters to see to will be to repair the raft,"
was my rather melancholy response.

"Of course. We must attend to that above all things," continued the
Professor.

"Then comes the all-important question of provisions," I urged. "Have we
anything like enough left to enable us to accomplish such great, such
amazing, designs as you contemplate carrying out?"

"I have seen into the matter, and my answer is in the affirmative. Hans
is a very clever fellow, and I have reason to believe that he has saved
the greater part of the cargo. But the best way to satisfy your scruples
is to come and judge for yourself."

Saying which, he led the way out of the kind of open grotto in which we
had taken shelter. I had almost begun to hope that which I should rather
have feared, and this was the impossibility of such a shipwreck leaving
even the slightest signs of what it had carried as freight. I was,
however, thoroughly mistaken.

As soon as I reached the shores of this inland sea, I found Hans
standing gravely in the midst of a large number of things laid out in
complete order. My uncle wrung his hands with deep and silent gratitude.
His heart was too full for speech.

This man, whose superhuman devotion to his employers I not only never
saw surpassed, nor even equaled, had been hard at work all the time we
slept, and at the risk of his life had succeeded in saving the most
precious articles of our cargo.

Of course, under the circumstances, we necessarily experienced several
severe losses. Our weapons had wholly vanished. But experience had
taught us to do without them. The provision of powder had, however,
remained intact, after having narrowly escaped blowing us all to atoms
in the storm.

"Well," said the Professor, who was now ready to make the best of
everything, "as we have no guns, all we have to do is to give up all
idea of hunting."

"Yes, my dear sir, we can do without them, but what about all our
instruments?"

"Here is the manometer, the most useful of all, and which I gladly
accept in lieu of the rest. With it alone I can calculate the depth as
we proceed; by its means alone I shall be able to decide when we have
reached the centre of the earth. Ha, ha! but for this little instrument
we might make a mistake, and run the risk of coming out at the
antipodes!"

All this was said amid bursts of unnatural laughter.

"But the compass," I cried, "without that what can we do?"

"Here it is, safe and sound!" he cried, with real joy, "ah, ah, and here
we have the chronometer and the thermometers. Hans the hunter is indeed
an invaluable man!"

It was impossible to deny this fact. As far as the nautical and other
instruments were concerned, nothing was wanting. Then on further
examination, I found ladders, cords, pickaxes, crowbars, and shovels,
all scattered about on the shore.

There was, however, finally the most important question of all, and that
was, provisions.

"But what are we to do for food?" I asked.

"Let us see to the commissariat department", replied my uncle gravely.

The boxes which contained our supply of food for the voyage were placed
in a row along the strand, and were in a capital state of preservation;
the sea had in every case respected their contents, and to sum up in one
sentence, taking into consideration, biscuits, salt meat, Schiedam and
dried fish, we could still calculate on having about four months'
supply, if used with prudence and caution.

"Four months," cried the sanguine Professor in high glee. "Then we shall
have plenty of time both to go and to come, and with what remains I
undertake to give a grand dinner to my colleagues of the Johanneum."

I sighed. I should by this time have become used to the temperament of
my uncle, and yet this man astonished me more and more every day. He was
the greatest human enigma I ever had known.

"Now," he, "before we do anything else, we must lay in a stock of fresh
water. The rain has fallen in abundance, and filled the hollows of the
granite. There is a rich supply of water, and we have no fear of
suffering from thirst, which in our circumstances is of the last
importance. As for the raft, I shall recommend Hans to repair it to the
best of his abilities; though I have every reason to believe we shall
not require it again."

"How is that?" I cried, more amazed than ever at my uncle's style of
reasoning.

"I have an idea, my dear boy; it is none other than this simple fact; we
shall not come out by the same opening as that by which we entered."

I began to look at my uncle with vague suspicion. An idea had more than
once taken possession of me; and this was, that he was going mad. And
yet, little did I think how true and prophetic his words were doomed to
be.

"And now," he said, "having seen to all these matters of detail, to
breakfast."

I followed him to a sort of projecting cape, after he had given his last
instructions to our guide. In this original position, with dried meat,
biscuit, and a delicious cup of tea, we made a satisfactory meal--I may
say one of the most welcome and pleasant I ever remember. Exhaustion,
the keen atmosphere, the state of calm after so much agitation, all
contributed to give me an excellent appetite. Indeed, it contributed
very much to producing a pleasant and cheerful state of mind.

While breakfast was in hand, and between the sips of warm tea, I asked
my uncle if he had any idea of how we now stood in relation to the world
above.

"For my part," I added, "I think it will be rather difficult to
determine."

"Well, if we were compelled to fix the exact spot," said my uncle, "it
might be difficult, since during the three days of that awful tempest I
could keep no account either of the quickness of our pace, or of the
direction in which the raft was going. Still, we will endeavor to
approximate to the truth. We shall not, I believe, be so very far out."

"Well, if I recollect rightly," I replied, "our last observation was
made at the geyser island."

"Harry's Island, my boy! Harry's Island. Do not decline the honor of
having named it; given your name to an island discovered by us, the
first human beings who trod it since the creation of the world!"

"Let it be so, then. At Harry's Island we had already gone over two
hundred and seventy leagues of sea, and we were, I believe, about six
hundred leagues, more or less, from Iceland."

"Good. I am glad to see that you remember so well. Let us start from
that point, and let us count four days of storm, during which our rate
of traveling must have been very great. I should say that our velocity
must have been about eighty leagues to the twenty-four hours."

I agreed that I thought this a fair calculation. There were then three
hundred leagues to be added to the grand total.

"Yes, and the Central Sea must extend at least six hundred leagues from
side to side. Do you know, my boy, Harry, that we have discovered an
inland lake larger than the Mediterranean?"

"Certainly, and we only know of its extent in one way. It may be
hundreds of miles in length."

"Very likely."

"Then," said I, after calculating for some for some minutes, "if your
previsions are right, we are at this moment exactly under the
Mediterranean itself."

"Do you think so?"

"Yes, I am almost certain of it. Are we not nine hundred leagues distant
from Reykjavik?"

"That is perfectly true, and a famous bit of road we have traveled, my
boy. But why we should be under the Mediterranean more than under Turkey
or the Atlantic Ocean can only be known when we are sure of not having
deviated from our course; and of this we know nothing."

"I do not think we were driven very far from our course; the wind
appears to me to have been always about the same. My opinion is that
this shore must be situated to the southeast of Port Gretchen."

"Good--I hope so. It will, however, be easy to decide the matter by
taking the bearings from our departure by means of the compass. Come
along, and we will consult that invaluable invention."

The Professor now walked eagerly in the direction of the rock where the
indefatigable Hans had placed the instruments in safety. My uncle was
gay and lighthearted; he rubbed his hands, and assumed all sorts of
attitudes. He was to all appearance once more a young man. Since I had
known him, never had he been so amiable and pleasant. I followed him,
rather curious to know whether I had made any mistake in my estimation
of our position.

As soon as we had reached the rock, my uncle took the compass, placed it
horizontally before him, and looked keenly at the needle.

As he had at first shaken it to give it vivacity, it oscillated
considerably, and then slowly assumed its right position under the
influence of the magnetic power.

The Professor bent his eyes curiously over the wondrous instrument. A
violent start immediately showed the extent of his emotion.

He closed his eyes, rubbed them, and took another and a keener survey.

Then he turned slowly round to me, stupefaction depicted on his
countenance.

"What is the matter?" said I, beginning to be alarmed.

He could not speak. He was too overwhelmed for words. He simply pointed
to the instrument.

I examined it eagerly according to his mute directions, and a loud cry
of surprise escaped my lips. The needle of the compass pointed due
north--in the direction we expected was the south!

It pointed to the shore instead of to the high seas.

I shook the compass; I examined it with a curious and anxious eye. It
was in a state of perfection. No blemish in any way explained the
phenomenon. Whatever position we forced the needle into, it returned
invariably to the same unexpected point.

It was useless attempting to conceal from ourselves the fatal truth.

There could be no doubt about it, unwelcome as was the fact, that during
the tempest, there had been a sudden slant of wind, of which we had been
unable to take any account, and thus the raft had carried us back to the
shores we had left, apparently forever, so many days before!

It would be altogether impossible for me to give any idea of the utter
astonishment which overcame the Professor on making this extraordinary
discovery. Amazement, incredulity, and rage were blended in such a way
as to alarm me.

During the whole course of my Life I had never seen a man at first so
chapfallen; and then so furiously indignant.

The terrible fatigues of our sea voyage, the fearful dangers we had
passed through, had all, all, gone for nothing. We had to begin them all
over again.

Instead of progressing, as we fondly expected, during a voyage of so
many days, we had retreated. Every hour of our expedition on the raft
had been so much lost time!

Presently, however, the indomitable energy of my uncle overcame every
other consideration.

"So," he said, between his set teeth, "fatality will play me these
terrible tricks. The elements themselves conspire to overwhelm me with
mortification. Air, fire, and water combine their united efforts to
oppose my passage. Well, they shall see what the earnest will of a
determined man can do. I will not yield, I will not retreat even one
inch; and we shall see who shall triumph in this great contest--man or
nature."

Standing upright on a rock, irritated and menacing, Professor Hardwigg,
like the ferocious Ajax, seemed to defy the fates. I, however, took upon
myself to interfere, and to impose some sort of check upon such
insensate enthusiasm.

"Listen to me, Uncle," I said, in a firm but temperate tone of voice,
"there must be some limit to ambition here below. It is utterly useless
to struggle against the impossible. Pray listen to reason. We are
utterly unprepared for a sea voyage; it is simply madness to think of
performing a journey of five hundred leagues upon a wretched pile of
beams, with a counterpane for a sail, a paltry stick for a mast, and a
tempest to contend with. As we are totally incapable of steering our
frail craft, we shall become the mere plaything of the storm, and it is
acting the part of madmen if we, a second time, run any risk upon this
dangerous and treacherous Central Sea."

These are only a few of the reasons and arguments I put
together--reasons and arguments which to me appeared unanswerable. I was
allowed to go on without interruption for about ten minutes. The
explanation to this I soon discovered. The Professor was not even
listening, and did not hear a word of all my eloquence.

"To the raft!" he cried in a hoarse voice, when I paused for a reply.

Such was the result of my strenuous effort to resist his iron will. I
tried again; I begged and implored him; I got into a passion; but I had
to deal with a will more determined than my own. I seemed to feel like
the waves which fought and battled against the huge mass of granite at
our feet, which had smiled grimly for so many ages at their puny
efforts.

Hans, meanwhile, without taking part in our discussion, had been
repairing the raft. One would have supposed that he instinctively
guessed at the further projects of my uncle.

By means of some fragments of cordage, he had again made the raft
seaworthy.

While I had been speaking, he had hoisted a new mast and sail, the
latter already fluttering and waving in the breeze.

The worthy Professor spoke a few words to our imperturbable guide, who
immediately began to put our baggage on board and to prepare for our
departure. The atmosphere was now tolerably clear and pure, and the
northeast wind blew steadily and serenely. It appeared likely to last
for some time.

What, then, could I do? Could I undertake to resist the iron will of two
men? It was simply impossible if even I could have hoped for the support
of Hans. This, however, was out of the question. It appeared to me that
the Icelander had set aside all personal will and identity. He was a
picture of abnegation.

I could hope for nothing from one so infatuated with and devoted to his
master. All I could do, therefore, was to swim with the stream.

In a mood of stolid and sullen resignation, I was about to take my
accustomed place on the raft when my uncle placed his hand upon my
shoulder.

"There is no hurry, my boy," he said, "we shall not start until
tomorrow."

I looked the picture of resignation to the dire will of fate.

"Under the circumstances," he said, "I ought to neglect no precautions.
As fate has cast me upon these shores, I shall not leave without having
completely examined them."

In order to understand this remark, I must explain that though we had
been driven back to the northern shore, we had landed at a very
different spot from that which had been our starting point.

Port Gretchen must, we calculated, be very much to the westward.
Nothing, therefore, was more natural and reasonable than that we should
reconnoiter this new shore upon which we had so unexpectedly landed.

"Let us go on a journey of discovery," I cried.

And leaving Hans to his important operation, we started on our
expedition. The distance between the foreshore at high water and the
foot of the rocks was considerable. It would take about half an hour's
walking to get from one to the other.

As we trudged along, our feet crushed innumerable shells of every shape
and size--once the dwelling place of animals of every period of
creation.

I particularly noticed some enormous shells--carapaces (turtle and
tortoise species) the diameter of which exceeded fifteen feet.

They had in past ages belonged to those gigantic Glyptodons of the
Pliocene period, of which the modern turtle is but a minute specimen. In
addition, the whole soil was covered by a vast quantity of stony relics,
having the appearance of flints worn by the action of the waves, and
lying in successive layers one above the other. I came to the conclusion
that in past ages the sea must have covered the whole district. Upon the
scattered rocks, now lying far beyond its reach, the mighty waves of
ages had left evident marks of their passage.

On reflection, this appeared to me partially to explain the existence of
this remarkable ocean, forty leagues below the surface of the earth's
crust. According to my new, and perhaps fanciful, theory, this liquid
mass must be gradually lost in the deep bowels of the earth. I had also
no doubt that this mysterious sea was fed by infiltration of the ocean
above, through imperceptible fissures.

Nevertheless, it was impossible not to admit that these fissures must
now be nearly choked up, for if not, the cavern, or rather the immense
and stupendous reservoir, would have been completely filled in a short
space of time. Perhaps even this water, having to contend against the
accumulated subterraneous fires of the interior of the earth, had become
partially vaporized. Hence the explanation of those heavy clouds
suspended over our heads, and the superabundant display of that
electricity which occasioned such terrible storms in this deep and
cavernous sea.

This lucid explanation of the phenomena we had witnessed appeared to me
quite satisfactory. However great and mighty the marvels of nature may
seem to us, they are always to be explained by physical reasons.
Everything is subordinate to some great law of nature.

It now appeared clear that we were walking upon a kind of sedimentary
soil, formed like all the soils of that period, so frequent on the
surface of the globe, by the subsidence of the waters. The Professor,
who was now in his element, carefully examined every rocky fissure. Let
him only find an opening and it directly became important to him to
examine its depth.

For a whole mile we followed the windings of the Central Sea, when
suddenly an important change took place in the aspect of the soil. It
seemed to have been rudely cast up, convulsionized, as it were, by a
violent upheaving of the lower strata. In many places, hollows here and
hillocks there attested great dislocations at some other period of the
terrestrial mass.

We advanced with great difficulty over the broken masses of granite
mixed with flint, quartz, and alluvial deposits, when a large field,
more even than a field, a plain of bones, appeared suddenly before our
eyes! It looked like an immense cemetery, where generation after
generation had mingled their mortal dust.

Lofty barrows of early remains rose at intervals. They undulated away to
the limits of the distant horizon and were lost in a thick and brown
fog.

On that spot, some three square miles in extent, was accumulated the
whole history of animal life--scarcely one creature upon the
comparatively modern soil of the upper and inhabited world had not there
existed.

Nevertheless, we were drawn forward by an all-absorbing and impatient
curiosity. Our feet crushed with a dry and crackling sound the remains
of those prehistoric fossils, for which the museums of great cities
quarrel, even when they obtain only rare and curious morsels. A thousand
such naturalists as Cuvier would not have sufficed to recompose the
skeletons of the organic beings which lay in this magnificent osseous
collection.

I was utterly confounded. My uncle stood for some minutes with his arms
raised on high towards the thick granite vault which served us for a
sky. His mouth was wide open; his eyes sparkled wildly behind his
spectacles (which he had fortunately saved), his head bobbed up and down
and from side to side, while his whole attitude and mien expressed
unbounded astonishment.

He stood in the presence of an endless, wondrous, and inexhaustibly rich
collection of antediluvian monsters, piled up for his own private and
peculiar satisfaction.

Fancy an enthusiastic lover of books carried suddenly into the very
midst of the famous library of Alexandria burned by the sacrilegious
Omar, and which some miracle had restored to its pristine splendor! Such
was something of the state of mind in which Uncle Hardwigg was now
placed.

For some time he stood thus, literally aghast at the magnitude of his
discovery.

But it was even a greater excitement when, darting wildly over this mass
of organic dust, he caught up a naked skull and addressed me in a
quivering voice:

"Harry, my boy--Harry--this is a human head!"

"A human head, Uncle!" I said, no less amazed and stupefied than
himself.

"Yes, nephew. Ah! Mr. Milne-Edwards--ah! Mr. De Quatrefages--why are you
not here where I am--I, Professor Hardwigg!"

In order fully to understand the exclamation made by my uncle, and his
allusions to these illustrious and learned men, it will be necessary to
enter into certain explanations in regard to a circumstance of the
highest importance to paleontology, or the science of fossil life, which
had taken place a short time before our departure from the upper regions
of the earth.

On the 28th of March, 1863, some navigators under the direction of M.
Boucher de Perthes, were at work in the great quarries of
Moulin-Quignon, near Abbeville, in the department of the Somme, in
France. While at work, they unexpectedly came upon a human jawbone
buried fourteen feet below the surface of the soil. It was the first
fossil of the kind that had ever been brought to the light of day. Near
this unexpected human relic were found stone hatchets and carved flints,
colored and clothed by time in one uniform brilliant tint of verdigris.

The report of this extraordinary and unexpected discovery spread not
only all over France, but over England and Germany. Many learned men
belonging to various scientific bodies, and noteworthy among others,
Messrs. Milne-Edwards and De Quatrefages, took the affair very much to
heart, demonstrated the incontestable authenticity of the bone in
question, and became--to use the phrase then recognized in England--the
most ardent supporters of the "jawbone question."

To the eminent geologists of the United Kingdom who looked upon the fact
as certain--Messrs. Falconer, Buck, Carpenter, and others--were soon
united the learned men of Germany, and among those in the first rank,
the most eager, the most enthusiastic, was my worthy uncle, Professor
Hardwigg.

The authenticity of a human fossil of the Quaternary period seemed then
to be incontestably demonstrated, and even to be admitted by the most
skeptical.

This system or theory, call it what you will, had, it is true, a bitter
adversary in M. Elie de Beaumont. This learned man, who holds such a
high place in the scientific world, holds that the soil of
Moulin-Quignon does not belong to the diluvium but to a much less
ancient stratum, and, in accordance with Cuvier in this respect, he
would by no means admit that the human species was contemporary with the
animals of the Quaternary epoch. My worthy uncle, Professor Hardwigg, in
concert with the great majority of geologists, had held firm, had
disputed, discussed, and finally, after considerable talking and
writing, M. Elie de Beaumont had been pretty well left alone in his
opinions.

We were familiar with all the details of this discussion, but were far
from being aware then that since our departure the matter had entered
upon a new phase. Other similar jawbones, though belonging to
individuals of varied types and very different natures, had been found
in the movable grey sands of certain grottoes in France, Switzerland,
and Belgium; together with arms, utensils, tools, bones of children, of
men in the prime of life, and of old men. The existence of men in the
Quaternary period became, therefore, more positive every day.

But this was far from being all. New remains, dug up from the Pliocene
or Tertiary deposits, had enabled the more far-seeing or audacious among
learned men to assign even a far greater degree of antiquity to the
human race. These remains, it is true, were not those of men; that is,
were not the bones of men, but objects decidedly having served the human
race: shinbones, thighbones of fossil animals, regularly scooped out,
and in fact sculptured--bearing the unmistakable signs of human
handiwork.

By means of these wondrous and unexpected discoveries, man ascended
endless centuries in the scale of time; he, in fact, preceded the
mastodon; became the contemporary of the Elephas meridionalis--the
southern elephant; acquired an antiquity of over a hundred thousand
years, since that is the date given by the most eminent geologists to
the Pliocene period of the earth. Such was then the state of
paleontologic science, and what we moreover knew sufficed to explain our
attitude before this great cemetery of the plains of the Hardwigg Ocean.

It will now be easy to understand the Professor's mingled astonishment
and joy when, on advancing about twenty yards, he found himself in the
presence of, I may say face to face with, a specimen of the human race
actually belonging to the Quaternary period!

It was indeed a human skull, perfectly recognizable. Had a soil of very
peculiar nature, like that of the cemetery of St. Michel at Bordeaux,
preserved it during countless ages? This was the question I asked
myself, but which I was wholly unable to answer. But this head with
stretched and parchmenty skin, with the teeth whole, the hair abundant,
was before our eyes as in life!

I stood mute, almost paralyzed with wonder and awe before this dread
apparition of another age. My uncle, who on almost every occasion was a
great talker, remained for a time completely dumfounded. He was too full
of emotion for speech to be possible. After a while, however, we raised
up the body to which the skull belonged. We stood it on end. It seemed,
to our excited imaginations, to look at us with its terrible hollow
eyes.

After some minutes of silence, the man was vanquished by the Professor.
Human instincts succumbed to scientific pride and exultation. Professor
Hardwigg, carried away by his enthusiasm, forgot all the circumstances
of our journey, the extraordinary position in which we were placed, the
immense cavern which stretched far away over our heads. There can be no
doubt that he thought himself at the Institution addressing his
attentive pupils, for he put on his most doctorial style, waved his
hand, and began:

"Gentlemen, I have the honor on this auspicious occasion to present to
you a man of the Quaternary period of our globe. Many learned men have
denied his very existence, while other able persons, perhaps of even
higher authority, have affirmed their belief in the reality of his life.
If the St. Thomases of paleontology were present, they would
reverentially touch him with their fingers and believe in his existence,
thus acknowledging their obstinate heresy. I know that science should be
careful in relation to all discoveries of this nature. I am not without
having heard of the many Barnums and other quacks who have made a trade
of suchlike pretended discoveries. I have, of course, heard of the
discovery of the kneebones of Ajax, of the pretended finding of the body
of Orestes by the Spartiates, and of the body of Asterius, ten spans
long, fifteen feet--of which we read in Pausanias.

"I have read everything in relation to the skeleton of Trapani,
discovered in the fourteenth century, and which many persons chose to
regard as that of Polyphemus, and the history of the giant dug up during
the sixteenth century in the environs of Palmyra. You are well aware as
I am, gentlemen, of the existence of the celebrated analysis made near
Lucerne, in 1577, of the great bones which the celebrated Doctor Felix
Plater declared belonged to a giant about nineteen feet high. I have
devoured all the treatises of Cassanion, and all those memoirs,
pamphlets, speeches, and replies published in reference to the skeleton
of Teutobochus, king of the Cimbri, the invader of Gaul, dug out of a
gravel pit in Dauphine, in 1613. In the eighteenth century I should have
denied, with Peter Campet, the existence of the preadamites of
Scheuchzer. I have had in my hands the writing called Gigans--"

Here my uncle was afflicted by the natural infirmity which prevented him
from pronouncing difficult words in public. It was not exactly
stuttering, but a strange sort of constitutional hesitation.

"The writing named Gigans--" he repeated.

He, however, could get no further.

"Giganteo--"

Impossible! The unfortunate word would not come out. There would have
been great laughter at the Institution, had the mistake happened there.

"Gigantosteology!" at last exclaimed Professor Hardwigg between two
savage growls.

Having got over our difficulty, and getting more and more excited--

"Yes, gentlemen, I am well acquainted with all these matters, and know,
also, that Cuvier and Blumenbach fully recognized in these bones the
undeniable remains of mammoths of the Quaternary period. But after what
we now see, to allow a doubt is to insult scientific inquiry. There is
the body; you can see it; you can touch it. It is not a skeleton, it is
a complete and uninjured body, preserved with an anthropological
object."

I did not attempt to controvert this singular and astounding assertion.

"If I could but wash this corpse in a solution of sulphuric acid,"
continued my uncle, "I would undertake to remove all the earthy
particles, and these resplendent shells, which are incrusted all over
this body. But I am without this precious dissolving medium.
Nevertheless, such as it is, this body will tell its own history."

Here the Professor held up the fossil body, and exhibited it with rare
dexterity. No professional showman could have shown more activity.

"As on examination you will see," my uncle continued, "it is only about
six feet in length, which is a long way from the pretended giants of
early days. As to the particular race to which it belonged, it is
incontestably Caucasian. It is of the white race, that is, of our own.
The skull of this fossil being is a perfect ovoid without any remarkable
or prominent development of the cheekbones, and without any projection
of the jaw. It presents no indication of the prognathism which modifies
the facial angle.[4] Measure the angle for yourselves, and you will find
that it is just ninety degrees. But I will advance still farther on the
road of inquiry and deduction, and I dare venture to say that this human
sample or specimen belongs to the Japhetic family, which spread over the
world from India to the uttermost limits of western Europe. There is no
occasion, gentlemen, to smile at my remarks."

[4] The facial angle is formed by two planes--one more or less vertical
which is in a straight line with the forehead and the incisors; the
other, horizontal, which passes through the organs of hearing, and the
lower nasal bone. Prognathism, in anthropological language, means that
particular projection of the jaw which modifies the facial angle.

Of course nobody smiled. But the excellent Professor was so accustomed
to beaming countenances at his lectures, that he believed he saw all his
audience laughing during the delivery of his learned dissertation.

"Yes," he continued, with renewed animation, "this is a fossil man, a
contemporary of the mastodons, with the bones of which this whole
amphitheater is covered. But if I am called on to explain how he came to
this place, how these various strata by which he is covered have fallen
into this vast cavity, I can undertake to give you no explanation.
Doubtless, if we carry ourselves back to the Quaternary epoch, we shall
find that great and mighty convulsions took place in the crust of the
earth; the continually cooling operation, through which the earth had to
pass, produced fissures, landslips, and chasms, through which a large
portion of the earth made its way. I come to no absolute conclusion, but
there is the man, surrounded by the works of his hands, his hatchets and
his carved flints, which belong to the stony period; and the only
rational supposition is, that, like myself, he visited the centre of the
earth as a traveling tourist, a pioneer of science. At all events, there
can be no doubt of his great age, and of his being one of the oldest
race of human beings."

The Professor with these words ceased his oration, and I burst forth
into loud and "unanimous" applause. Besides, after all, my uncle was
right. Much more learned men than his nephew would have found it rather
hard to refute his facts and arguments.

Another circumstance soon presented itself. This fossilized body was not
the only one in this vast plain of bones--the cemetery of an extinct
world. Other bodies were found, as we trod the dusty plain, and my uncle
was able to choose the most marvelous of these specimens in order to
convince the most incredulous.

In truth, it was a surprising spectacle, the successive remains of
generations and generations of men and animals confounded together in
one vast cemetery. But a great question now presented itself to our
notice, and one we were actually afraid to contemplate in all its
bearings.

Had these once animated beings been buried so far beneath the soil by
some tremendous convulsion of nature, after they had been earth to earth
and ashes to ashes, or had they lived here below, in this subterranean
world, under this factitious sky, borne, married, and given in marriage,
and died at last, just like ordinary inhabitants of the earth?

Up to the present moment, marine monsters, fish, and suchlike animals
had alone been seen alive!

The question which rendered us rather uneasy, was a pertinent one. Were
any of these men of the abyss wandering about the deserted shores of
this wondrous sea of the centre of the earth?

This was a question which rendered me very uneasy and uncomfortable.
How, should they really be in existence, would they receive us men from
above?

For a long and weary hour we tramped over this great bed of bones. We
advanced regardless of everything, drawn on by ardent curiosity. What
other marvels did this great cavern contain--what other wondrous
treasures for the scientific man? My eyes were quite prepared for any
number of surprises, my imagination lived in expectation of something
new and wonderful.

The borders of the great Central Ocean had for some time disappeared
behind the hills that were scattered over the ground occupied by the
plain of bones. The imprudent and enthusiastic Professor, who did not
care whether he lost himself or not, hurried me forward. We advanced
silently, bathed in waves of electric fluid.

By reason of a phenomenon which I cannot explain, and thanks to its
extreme diffusion, now complete, the light illumined equally the sides
of every hill and rock. Its seat appeared to be nowhere, in no
determined force, and produced no shade whatever.

The appearance presented was that of a tropical country at midday in
summer--in the midst of the equatorial regions and under the vertical
rays of the sun.

All signs of vapor had disappeared. The rocks, the distant mountains,
some confused masses of far-off forests, assumed a weird and mysterious
aspect under this equal distribution of the luminous fluid!

We resembled, to a certain extent, the mysterious personage in one of
Hoffmann's fantastic tales--the man who lost his shadow.

After we had walked about a mile farther, we came to the edge of a vast
forest not, however, one of the vast mushroom forests we had discovered
near Port Gretchen.

It was the glorious and wild vegetation of the Tertiary period, in all
its superb magnificence. Huge palms, of a species now unknown, superb
palmacites--a genus of fossil palms from the coal formation--pines,
yews, cypress, and conifers or cone-bearing trees, the whole bound
together by an inextricable and complicated mass of creeping plants.

A beautiful carpet of mosses and ferns grew beneath the trees. Pleasant
brooks murmured beneath umbrageous boughs, little worthy of this name,
for no shade did they give. Upon their borders grew small treelike
shrubs, such as are seen in the hot countries on our own inhabited
globe.

The one thing wanting in these plants, these shrubs, these trees--was
color! Forever deprived of the vivifying warmth of the sun, they were
vapid and colorless. All shade was lost in one uniform tint, of a brown
and faded character. The leaves were wholly devoid of verdure, and the
flowers, so numerous during the Tertiary period which gave them birth,
were without color and without perfume, something like paper discolored
by long exposure to the atmosphere.

My uncle ventured beneath the gigantic groves. I followed him, though
not without a certain amount of apprehension. Since nature had shown
herself capable of producing such stupendous vegetable supplies, why
might we not meet with mammals just as large, and therefore dangerous?

I particularly remarked, in the clearings left by trees that had fallen
and been partially consumed by time, many leguminous (beanlike) shrubs,
such as the maple and other eatable trees, dear to ruminating animals.
Then there appeared confounded together and intermixed, the trees of
such varied lands, specimens of the vegetation of every part of the
globe; there was the oak near the palm tree, the Australian eucalyptus,
an interesting class of the order Myrtaceae--leaning against the tall
Norwegian pine, the poplar of the north, mixing its branches with those
of the New Zealand kauris. It was enough to drive the most ingenious
classifier of the upper regions out of his mind, and to upset all his
received ideas about botany.

Suddenly I stopped short and restrained my uncle.

The extreme diffuseness of the light enabled me to see the smallest
objects in the distant copses. I thought I saw--no, I really did see
with my own eyes--immense, gigantic animals moving about under the
mighty trees. Yes, they were truly gigantic animals, a whole herd of
mastodons, not fossils, but living, and exactly like those discovered in
1801, on the marshy banks of the great Ohio, in North America.

Yes, I could see these enormous elephants, whose trunks were tearing
down large boughs, and working in and out the trees like a legion of
serpents. I could hear the sounds of the mighty tusks uprooting huge
trees!

The boughs crackled, and the whole masses of leaves and green branches
went down the capacious throats of these terrible monsters!

That wondrous dream, when I saw the antehistorical times revivified,
when the Tertiary and Quaternary periods passed before me, was now
realized!

And there we were alone, far down in the bowels of the earth, at the
mercy of its ferocious inhabitants!

My uncle paused, full of wonder and astonishment.

"Come!" he said at last, when his first surprise was over, "Come along,
my boy, and let us see them nearer."

"No," replied I, restraining his efforts to drag me forward, "we are
wholly without arms. What should we do in the midst of that flock of
gigantic quadrupeds? Come away, Uncle, I implore you. No human creature
can with impunity brave the ferocious anger of these monsters."

"No human creature," said my uncle, suddenly lowering his voice to a
mysterious whisper, "you are mistaken, my dear Henry. Look! look yonder!
It seems to me that I behold a human being--a being like ourselves--a
man!"

I looked, shrugging my shoulders, decided to push incredulity to its
very last limits. But whatever might have been my wish, I was compelled
to yield to the weight of ocular demonstration.

Yes--not more than a quarter of a mile off, leaning against the trunk of
an enormous tree, was a human being--a Proteus of these subterranean
regions, a new son of Neptune keeping this innumerable herd of
mastodons.

Immanis pecoris custos, immanior ipse![5]

[5] The keeper of gigantic cattle, himself still more gigantic!

Yes--it was no longer a fossil whose corpse we had raised from the
ground in the great cemetery, but a giant capable of guiding and driving
these prodigious monsters. His height was above twelve feet. His head,
as big as the head of a buffalo, was lost in a mane of matted hair. It
was indeed a huge mane, like those which belonged to the elephants of
the earlier ages of the world.

In his hand was a branch of a tree, which served as a crook for this
antediluvian shepherd.

We remained profoundly still, speechless with surprise.

But we might at any moment be seen by him. Nothing remained for us but
instant flight.

"Come, come!" I cried, dragging my uncle along; and, for the first time,
he made no resistance to my wishes.

A quarter of an hour later we were far away from that terrible monster!

Now that I think of the matter calmly, and that I reflect upon it
dispassionately; now that months, years, have passed since this strange
and unnatural adventure befell us--what am I to think, what am I to
believe?

No, it is utterly impossible! Our ears must have deceived us, and our
eyes have cheated us! we have not seen what we believed we had seen. No
human being could by any possibility have existed in that subterranean
world! No generation of men could inhabit the lower caverns of the globe
without taking note of those who peopled the surface, without
communication with them. It was folly, folly, folly! nothing else!

I am rather inclined to admit the existence of some animal resembling in
structure the human race--of some monkey of the first geological epochs,
like that discovered by M. Lartet in the ossiferous deposit of Sansan.

But this animal, or being, whichsoever it was, surpassed in height all
things known to modern science. Never mind. However unlikely it may be,
it might have been a monkey--but a man, a living man, and with him a
whole generation of gigantic animals, buried in the entrails of the
earth--it was too monstrous to be believed!

During this time, we had left the bright and transparent forest far
behind us. We were mute with astonishment, overcome by a kind of feeling
which was next door to apathy. We kept running in spite of ourselves. It
was a perfect Right, which resembled one of those horrible sensations we
sometimes meet with in our dreams.

Instinctively we made our way towards the Central Sea, and I cannot now
tell what wild thoughts passed through my mind, nor of what follies I
might have been guilty, but for a very serious preoccupation which
brought me back to practical life.

Though I was aware that we were treading on a soil quite new to us, I,
however, every now and then noticed certain aggregations of rock, the
shape of which forcibly reminded me of those near Port Gretchen.

This confirmed, moreover, the indications of the compass and our
extraordinary and unlooked-for, as well as involuntary, return to the
north of this great Central Sea. It was so like our starting point, that
I could scarcely doubt the reality of our position. Streams and cascades
fell in hundreds over the numerous projections of the rocks.

I actually thought I could see our faithful and monotonous Hans and the
wonderful grotto in which I had come back to life after my tremendous
fall.

Then, as we advanced still farther, the position of the cliffs, the
appearance of a stream, the unexpected profile of a rock, threw me again
into a state of bewildering doubt.

After some time, I explained my state of mental indecision to my uncle.
He confessed to a similar feeling of hesitation. He was totally unable
to make up his mind in the midst of this extraordinary but uniform
panorama.

"There can be no doubt," I insisted, "that we have not landed exactly at
the place whence we first took our departure; but the tempest has
brought us above our starting point. I think, therefore, that if we
follow the coast we shall once more find Port Gretchen."

"In that case," cried my uncle, "it is useless to continue our
exploration. The very best thing we can do is to make our way back to
the raft. Are you quite sure, Harry, that you are not mistaken?"

"It is difficult," was my reply, "to come to any decision, for all these
rocks are exactly alike. There is no marked difference between them. At
the same time, the impression on my mind is that I recognize the
promontory at the foot of which our worthy Hans constructed the raft. We
are, I am nearly convinced, near the little port: if this be not it," I
added, carefully examining a creek which appeared singularly familiar to
my mind.

"My dear Harry--if this were the case, we should find traces of our own
footsteps, some signs of our passage; and I can really see nothing to
indicate our having passed this way."

"But I see something," I cried, in an impetuous tone of voice, as I
rushed forward and eagerly picked up something which shone in the sand
under my feet.

"What is it?" cried the astonished and bewildered Professor.

"This," was my reply.

And I handed to my startled relative a rusty dagger, of singular shape.

"What made you bring with you so useless a weapon?" he exclaimed. "It
was needlessly hampering yourself."

"I bring it? It is quite new to me. I never saw it before--are you sure
it is not out of your collection?"

"Not that I know of," said the Professor, puzzled. "I have no
recollection of the circumstance. It was never my property."

"This is very extraordinary," I said, musing over the novel and singular
incident.

"Not at all. There is a very simple explanation, Harry. The Icelanders
are known to keep up the use of these antiquated weapons, and this must
have belonged to Hans, who has let it fall without knowing it."

I shook my head. That dagger had never been in the possession of the
pacific and taciturn Hans. I knew him and his habits too well.

"Then what can it be--unless it be the weapon of some antediluvian
warrior," I continued, "of some living man, a contemporary of that
mighty shepherd from whom we have just escaped? But no--mystery upon
mystery--this is no weapon of the stony epoch, nor even of the bronze
period. It is made of excellent steel--"

Ere I could finish my sentence, my uncle stopped me short from entering
upon a whole train of theories, and spoke in his most cold and decided
tone of voice.

"Calm yourself, my dear boy, and endeavor to use your reason. This
weapon, upon which we have fallen so unexpectedly, is a true dague,
one of those worn by gentlemen in their belts during the sixteenth
century. Its use was to give the coup de grace, the final blow, to the
foe who would not surrender. It is clearly of Spanish workmanship. It
belongs neither to you, nor to me, nor the eider-down hunter, nor to any
of the living beings who may still exist so marvelously in the interior
of the earth."

"What can you mean, Uncle?" I said, now lost in a host of surmises.

"Look closely at it," he continued; "these jagged edges were never made
by the resistance of human blood and bone. The blade is covered with a
regular coating of iron mold and rust, which is not a day old, not a
year old, not a century old, but much more--"

The Professor began to get quite excited, according to custom, and was
allowing himself to be carried away by his fertile imagination. I could
have said something. He stopped me.

"Harry," he cried, "we are now on the verge of a great discovery. This
blade of a dagger you have so marvelously discovered, after being
abandoned upon the sand for more than a hundred, two hundred, even three
hundred years, has been indented by someone endeavoring to carve an
inscription on these rocks."

"But this poniard never got here of itself," I exclaimed, "it could not
have twisted itself. Someone, therefore, must have preceded us upon the
shores of this extraordinary sea."

"Yes, a man."

"But what man has been sufficiently desperate to do such a thing?"

"A man who has somewhere written his name with this very dagger--a man
who has endeavored once more to indicate the right road to the interior
of the earth. Let us look around, my boy. You know not the importance of
your singular and happy discovery."

Prodigiously interested, we walked along the wall of rock, examining the
smallest fissures, which might finally expand into the much wished--for
gully or shaft.

We at last reached a spot where the shore became extremely narrow. The
sea almost bathed the foot of the rocks, which were here very lofty and
steep. There was scarcely a path wider than two yards at any point. At
last, under a huge over-hanging rock, we discovered the entrance of a
dark and gloomy tunnel.

There, on a square tablet of granite, which had been smoothed by rubbing
it with another stone, we could see two mysterious, and much worn
letters, the two initials of the bold and extraordinary traveler who had
preceded us on our adventurous journey.

[Illustration: Runic Glyph]

"A. S.!" cried my uncle. "You see, I was right. Arne Saknussemm, always
Arne Saknussemm!"

Ever since the commencement of our marvelous journey, I had experienced
many surprises, had suffered from many illusions. I thought that I was
case-hardened against all surprises and could neither see nor hear
anything to amaze me again.

I was like a many who, having been round the world, finds himself wholly
blase and proof against the marvelous.

When, however, I saw these two letters, which had been engraven three
hundred years before, I stood fixed in an attitude of mute surprise.

Not only was there the signature of the learned and enterprising
alchemist written in the rock, but I held in my hand the very identical
instrument with which he had laboriously engraved it.

It was impossible, without showing an amount of incredulity scarcely
becoming a sane man, to deny the existence of the traveler, and the
reality of that voyage which I believed all along to have been a
myth--the mystification of some fertile brain.

While these reflections were passing through my mind, my uncle, the
Professor, gave way to an access of feverish and poetical excitement.

"Wonderful and glorious genius, great Saknussemm," he cried, "you have
left no stone unturned, no resource omitted, to show to other mortals
the way into the interior of our mighty globe, and your fellow creatures
can find the trail left by your illustrious footsteps, three hundred
years ago, at the bottom of these obscure subterranean abodes. You have
been careful to secure for others the contemplation of these wonders and
marvels of creation. Your name engraved at every important stage of your
glorious journey leads the hopeful traveler direct to the great and
mighty discovery to which you devoted such energy and courage. The
audacious traveler, who shall follow your footsteps to the last, will
doubtless find your initials engraved with your own hand upon the centre
of the earth. I will be that audacious traveler--I, too, will sign my
name upon the very same spot, upon the central granite stone of this
wondrous work of the Creator. But in justice to your devotion, to your
courage, and to your being the first to indicate the road, let this
cape, seen by you upon the shores of this sea discovered by you, be
called, of all time, Cape Saknussemm."

This is what I heard, and I began to be roused to the pitch of
enthusiasm indicated by those words. A fierce excitement roused me. I
forgot everything. The dangers of the voyage and the perils of the
return journey were now as nothing!

What another man had done in ages past could, I felt, be done again; I
was determined to do it myself, and now nothing that man had
accomplished appeared to me impossible.

"Forward--forward," I cried in a burst of genuine and hearty enthusiasm.

I had already started in the direction of the somber and gloomy gallery
when the Professor stopped me; he, the man so rash and hasty, he, the
man so easily roused to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, checked me, and
asked me to be patient and show more calm.

"Let us return to our good friend, Hans," he said; "we will then bring
the raft down to this place."

I must say that though I at once yielded to my uncle's request, it was
not without dissatisfaction, and I hastened along the rocks of that
wonderful coast.

"Do you know, my dear uncle," I said, as we walked along, "that we have
been singularly helped by a concurrence of circumstances, right up to
this very moment."

"So you begin to see it, do you, Harry?" said the Professor with a
smile.

"Doubtless," I responded, "and strangely enough, even the tempest has
been the means of putting us on the right road. Blessings on the
tempest! It brought us safely back to the very spot from which fine
weather would have driven us forever. Supposing we had succeeded in
reaching the southern and distant shores of this extraordinary sea, what
would have become of us? The name of Saknussemm would never have
appeared to us, and at this moment we should have been cast away upon an
inhospitable coast, probably without an outlet."

"Yes, Harry, my boy, there is certainly something providential in that
wandering at the mercy of wind and waves towards the south: we have come
back exactly north; and what is better still, we fall upon this great
discovery of Cape Saknussemm. I mean to say, that it is more than
surprising; there is something in it which is far beyond my
comprehension. The coincidence is unheard of, marvelous!"

"What matter! It is not our duty to explain facts, but to make the best
possible use of them."

"Doubtless, my boy; but if you will allow me--" said the really
delighted Professor.

"Excuse me, sir, but I see exactly how it will be; we shall take the
northern route; we shall pass under the northern regions of Europe,
under Sweden, under Russia, under Siberia, and who knows where--instead
of burying ourselves under the burning plains and deserts of Africa, or
beneath the mighty waves of the ocean; and that is all, at this stage of
our journey, that I care to know. Let us advance, and Heaven will be our
guide!"

"Yes, Harry, you are right, quite right; all is for the best. Let us
abandon this horizontal sea, which could never have led to anything
satisfactory. We shall descend, descend, and everlastingly descend. Do
you know, my dear boy, that to reach the interior of the earth we have
only five thousand miles to travel!"

"Bah!" I cried, carried away by a burst of enthusiasm, "the distance is
scarcely worth speaking about. The thing is to make a start."

My wild, mad, and incoherent speeches continued until we rejoined our
patient and phlegmatic guide. All was, we found, prepared for an
immediate departure. There was not a single parcel but what was in its
proper place. We all took up our posts on the raft, and the sail being
hoisted, Hans received his directions, and guided the frail bark towards
Cape Saknussemm, as we had definitely named it.

The wind was very unfavorable to a craft that was unable to sail close
to the wind. It was constructed to go before the blast. We were
continually reduced to pushing ourselves forward by means of poles. On
several occasions the rocks ran far out into deep water and we were
compelled to make a long round. At last, after three long and weary
hours of navigation, that is to say, about six o'clock in the evening,
we found a place at which we could land.

I jumped on shore first. In my present state of excitement and
enthusiasm, I was always first. My uncle and the Icelander followed. The
voyage from the port to this point of the sea had by no means calmed me.
It had rather produced the opposite effect. I even proposed to burn our
vessel, that is, to destroy our raft, in order to completely cut off our
retreat. But my uncle sternly opposed this wild project. I began to
think him particularly lukewarm and unenthusiastic.

"At any rate, my dear uncle," I said, "let us start without delay."

"Yes, my boy, I am quite as eager to do so as you can be. But, in the
first place, let us examine this mysterious gallery, in order to find if
we shall need to prepare and mend our ladders."

My uncle now began to see to the efficiency of our Ruhmkorff coil, which
would doubtless soon be needed; the raft, securely fastened to a rock,
was left alone. Moreover, the opening into the new gallery was not
twenty paces distant from the spot. Our little troop, with myself at the
head, advanced.

The orifice, which was almost circular, presented a diameter of about
five feet; the somber tunnel was cut in the living rock, and coated on
the inside by the different material which had once passed through it in
a state of fusion. The lower part was about level with the water, so
that we were able to penetrate to the interior without difficulty.

We followed an almost horizontal direction; when, at the end of about a
dozen paces, our further advance was checked by the interposition of an
enormous block of granite rock.

"Accursed stone!" I cried furiously, on perceiving that we were stopped
by what seemed an insurmountable obstacle.

In vain we looked to the right, in vain we looked to the left; in vain
examined it above and below. There existed no passage, no sign of any
other tunnel. I experienced the most bitter and painful disappointment.
So enraged was I that I would not admit the reality of any obstacle. I
stooped to my knees; I looked under the mass of stone. No hole, no
interstice. I then looked above. The same barrier of granite! Hans, with
the lamp, examined the sides of the tunnel in every direction.

But all in vain! It was necessary to renounce all hope of passing
through.

I had seated myself upon the ground. My uncle walked angrily and
hopelessly up and down. He was evidently desperate.

"But," I cried, after some moments' thought, "what about Arne
Saknussemm?"

"You are right," replied my uncle, "he can never have been checked by a
lump of rock."

"No--ten thousand times no," I cried, with extreme vivacity. "This huge
lump of rock, in consequence of some singular concussion, or process,
one of those magnetic phenomena which have so often shaken the
terrestrial crust, has in some unexpected way closed up the passage.
Many and many years have passed away since the return of Saknussemm, and
the fall of this huge block of granite. Is it not quite evident that
this gallery was formerly the outlet for the pent-up lava in the
interior of the earth, and that these eruptive matters then circulated
freely? Look at these recent fissures in the granite roof; it is
evidently formed of pieces of enormous stone, placed here as if by the
hand of a giant, who had worked to make a strong and substantial arch.
One day, after an unusually strong shock, the vast rock which stands in
our way, and which was doubtless the key of a kind of arch, fell through
to a level with the soil and has barred our further progress. We are
right, then, in thinking that this is an unexpected obstacle, with which
Saknussemm did not meet; and if we do not upset it in some way, we are
unworthy of following in the footsteps of the great discoverer; and
incapable of finding our way to the centre of the earth!"

In this wild way I addressed my uncle. The zeal of the Professor, his
earnest longing for success, had become part and parcel of my being. I
wholly forgot the past; I utterly despised the future. Nothing existed
for me upon the surface of this spheroid in the bosom of which I was
engulfed, no towns, no country, no Hamburg, no Koenigstrasse, not even
my poor Gretchen, who by this time would believe me utterly lost in the
interior of the earth!

"Well," cried my uncle, roused to enthusiasm by my words, "Let us go to
work with pickaxes, with crowbars, with anything that comes to hand--but
down with these terrible walls."

"It is far too tough and too big to be destroyed by a pickax or
crowbar," I replied.

"What then?"

"As I said, it is useless to think of overcoming such a difficulty by
means of ordinary tools."

"What then?"

"What else but gunpowder, a subterranean mine? Let us blow up the
obstacle that stands in our way."

"Gunpowder!"

"Yes; all we have to do is to get rid of this paltry obstacle."

"To work, Hans, to work!" cried the Professor.

The Icelander went back to the raft, and soon returned with a huge
crowbar, with which he began to dig a hole in the rock, which was to
serve as a mine. It was by no means a slight task. It was necessary for
our purpose to make a cavity large enough to hold fifty pounds of
fulminating gun cotton, the expansive power of which is four times as
great as that of ordinary gunpowder.

I had now roused myself to an almost miraculous state of excitement.
While Hans was at work, I actively assisted my uncle to prepare a long
wick, made from damp gunpowder, the mass of which we finally enclosed in
a bag of linen.

"We are bound to go through," I cried, enthusiastically.

"We are bound to go through," responded the Professor, tapping me on the
back.

At midnight, our work as miners was completely finished; the charge of
fulminating cotton was thrust into the hollow, and the match, which we
had made of considerable length, was ready.

A spark was now sufficient to ignite this formidable engine, and to blow
the rock to atoms!

"We will now rest until tomorrow."

It was absolutely necessary to resign myself to my fate, and to consent
to wait for the explosion for six weary hours!

The next day, which was the twenty-seventh of August, was a date
celebrated in our wondrous subterranean journey. I never think of it
even now, but I shudder with horror. My heart beats wildly at the very
memory of that awful day.

From this time forward, our reason, our judgment, our human ingenuity,
have nothing to do with the course of events. We are about to become the
plaything of the great phenomena of the earth!

At six o'clock we were all up and ready. The dreaded moment was arriving
when we were about to seek an opening into the interior of the earth by
means of gunpowder. What would be the consequences of breaking through
the crust of the earth?

I begged that it might be my duty to set fire to the mine. I looked upon
it as an honor. This task once performed, I could rejoin my friends upon
the raft, which had not been unloaded. As soon as we were all ready, we
were to sail away to some distance to avoid the consequences of the
explosion, the effects of which would certainly not be concentrated in
the interior of the earth.

The slow match we calculated to burn for about ten minutes, more or
less, before it reached the chamber in which the great body of powder
was confined. I should therefore have plenty of time to reach the raft
and put off to a safe distance.

I prepared to execute my self-allotted task--not, it must be confessed,
without considerable emotion.

After a hearty repast, my uncle and the hunter-guide embarked on board
the raft, while I remained alone upon the desolate shore.

I was provided with a lantern which was to enable me to set fire to the
wick of the infernal machine.

"Go, my boy," said my uncle, "and Heaven be with you. But come back as
soon as you can. I shall be all impatience."

"Be easy on that matter," I replied, "there is no fear of my delaying on
the road."

Having said this, I advanced toward the opening of the somber gallery.
My heart beat wildly. I opened my lantern and seized the extremity of
the wick.

The Professor, who was looking on, held his chronometer in his hand.

"Are you ready?" cried he.

"Quite ready."

"Well, then, fire away!"

I hastened to put the light to the wick, which crackled and sparkled,
hissing and spitting like a serpent; then, running as fast as I could, I
returned to the shore.

"Get on board, my lad, and you, Hans, shove off," cried my uncle.

By a vigorous application of his pole Hans sent us flying over the
water. The raft was quite twenty fathoms distant.

It was a moment of palpitating interest, of deep anxiety. My uncle, the
Professor, never took his eyes off the chronometer.

"Only five minutes more," he said in a low tone, "only four, only
three."

My pulse went a hundred to the minute. I could hear my heart beating.

"Only two, one! Now, then, mountains of granite, crumble beneath the
power of man!"

What happened after that? As to the terrific roar of the explosion, I do
not think I heard it. But the form of the rocks completely changed in my
eyes--they seemed to be drawn aside like a curtain. I saw a fathomless,
a bottomless abyss, which yawned beneath the turgid waves. The sea,
which seemed suddenly to have gone mad, then became one great
mountainous mass, upon the top of which the raft rose perpendicularly.

We were all thrown down. In less than a second the light gave place to
the most profound obscurity. Then I felt all solid support give way not
to my feet, but to the raft itself. I thought it was going bodily down a
tremendous well. I tried to speak, to question my uncle. Nothing could
be heard but the roaring of the mighty waves. We clung together in utter
silence.

Despite the awful darkness, despite the noise, the surprise, the
emotion, I thoroughly understood what had happened.

Beyond the rock which had been blown up, there existed a mighty abyss.
The explosion had caused a kind of earthquake in this soil, broken by
fissures and rents. The gulf, thus suddenly thrown open, was about to
swallow the inland seal which, transformed into a mighty torrent, was
dragging us with it.

Only one idea filled my mind. We were utterly and completely lost!

One hour, two hours--what more I cannot say, passed in this manner. We
sat close together, elbow touching elbow, knee touching knee! We held
one another's hands not to be thrown off the raft. We were subjected to
the most violent shocks, whenever our sole dependence, a frail wooden
raft, struck against the rocky sides of the channel. Fortunately for us,
these concussions became less and less frequent, which made me fancy
that the gallery was getting wider and wider. There could be now no
doubt that we had chanced upon the road once followed by Saknussemm, but
instead of going down in a proper manner, we had, through our own
imprudence, drawn a whole sea with us!

These ideas presented themselves to my mind in a very vague and obscure
manner. I felt rather than reasoned. I put my ideas together only
confusedly, while spinning along like a man going down a waterfall. To
judge by the air which, as it were, whipped my face, we must have been
rushing at a perfectly lightning rate.

To attempt under these circumstances to light a torch was simply
impossible, and the last remains of our electric machine, of our
Ruhmkorff coil, had been destroyed during the fearful explosion.

I was therefore very much confused to see at last a bright light shining
close to me. The calm countenance of the guide seemed to gleam upon me.
The clever and patient hunter had succeeded in lighting the lantern; and
though, in the keen and thorough draft, the flame Flickered and
vacillated and was nearly put out, it served partially to dissipate the
awful obscurity.

The gallery into which we had entered was very wide. I was, therefore,
quite right in that part of my conjecture. The insufficient light did
not allow us to see both of the walls at the same time. The slope of
waters, which was carrying us away, was far greater than that of the
most rapid river of America. The whole surface of the stream seemed to
be composed of liquid arrows, darted forward with extreme violence and
power. I can give no idea of the impression it made upon me.

The raft, at times, caught in certain whirlpools, and rushed forward,
yet turned on itself all the time. How it did not upset I shall never be
able to understand. When it approached the sides of the gallery, I took
care to throw upon them the light of the lantern, and I was able to
judge of the rapidity of motion by looking at the projecting masses of
rock, which as soon as seen were again invisible. So rapid was our
progress that points of rock at a considerable distance one from the
other appeared like portions of transverse lines, which enclosed us in a
kind of net, like that of a line of telegraphic wires.

I believe we were now going at a rate of not less than a hundred miles
an hour.

My uncle and I looked at one another with wild and haggard eyes; we
clung convulsively to the stump of the mast, which, at the moment when
the catastrophe took place, had snapped short off. We turned our backs
as much as possible to the wind, in order not to be stifled by a
rapidity of motion which nothing human could face and live.

And still the long monotonous hours went on. The situation did not
change in the least, though a discovery I suddenly made seemed to
complicate it very much.

When we had slightly recovered our equilibrium, I proceeded to examine
our cargo. I then made the unsatisfactory discovery that the greater
part of it had utterly disappeared.

I became alarmed, and determined to discover what were our resources. My
heart beat at the idea, but it was absolutely necessary to know on what
we had to depend. With this view, I took the lantern and looked around.

Of all our former collection of nautical and philosophical instruments,
there remained only the chronometer and the compass. The ladders and
ropes were reduced to a small piece of rope fastened to the stump of the
mast. Not a pickax, not a crowbar, not a hammer, and, far worse than
all, no food--not enough for one day!

This discovery was a prelude to a certain and horrible death.

Seated gloomily on the raft, clasping the stump of the mast
mechanically, I thought of all I had read as to sufferings from
starvation.

I remembered everything that history had taught me on the subject, and I
shuddered at the remembrance of the agonies to be endured.

Maddened at the prospects of enduring the miseries of starvation, I
persuaded myself that I must be mistaken. I examined the cracks in the
raft; I poked between the joints and beams; I examined every possible
hole and corner. The result was--simply nothing!

Our stock of provisions consisted of nothing but a piece of dry meat and
some soaked and half-moldy biscuits.

I gazed around me scared and frightened. I could not understand the
awful truth. And yet of what consequence was it in regard to any new
danger? Supposing that we had had provisions for months, and even for
years, how could we ever get out of the awful abyss into which we were
being hurled by the irresistible torrent we had let loose?

Why should we trouble ourselves about the sufferings and tortures to be
endured from hunger when death stared us in the face under so many other
swifter and perhaps even more horrid forms?

It was very doubtful, under the circumstances in which we were placed,
if we should have time to die of inanition.

But the human frame is singularly constituted.

I know not how it was; but, from some singular hallucination of the
mind, I forgot the real, serious, and immediate danger to which we were
exposed, to think of the menaces of the future, which appeared before us
in all their naked terror. Besides, after all, suggested Hope, perhaps
we might finally escape the fury of the raging torrent, and once more
revisit the glimpses of the moon, on the surface of our beautiful Mother
Earth.

How was it to be done? I had not the remotest idea. Where were we to
come out? No matter, so that we did.

One chance in a thousand is always a chance, while death from hunger
gave us not even the faintest glimpse of hope. It left to the
imagination nothing but blank horror, without the faintest chance of
escape!

I had the greatest mind to reveal all to my uncle, to explain to him the
extraordinary and wretched position to which we were reduced, in order
that, between the two, we might make a calculation as to the exact space
of time which remained for us to live.

It was, it appeared to me, the only thing to be done. But I had the
courage to hold my tongue, to gnaw at my entrails like the Spartan boy.
I wished to leave him all his coolness.

At this moment, the light of the lantern slowly fell, and at last went
out!

The wick had wholly burnt to an end. The obscurity became absolute. It
was no longer possible to see through the impenetrable darkness! There
was one torch left, but it was impossible to keep it alight. Then, like
a child, I shut my eyes, that I might not see the darkness.

After a great lapse of time, the rapidity of our journey increased. I
could feel it by the rush of air upon my face. The slope of the waters
was excessive. I began to feel that we were no longer going down a
slope; we were falling. I felt as one does in a dream, going down
bodily--falling; falling; falling!

I felt that the hands of my uncle and Hans were vigorously clasping my
arms.

Suddenly, after a lapse of time scarcely appreciable, I felt something
like a shock. The raft had not struck a hard body, but had suddenly been
checked in its course. A waterspout, a liquid column of water, fell upon
us. I felt suffocating. I was being drowned.

Still the sudden inundation did not last. In a few seconds I felt myself
once more able to breathe. My uncle and Hans pressed my arms, and the
raft carried us all three away.

It is difficult for me to determine what was the real time, but I should
suppose, by after calculation, that it must have been ten at night.

I lay in a stupor, a half dream, during which I saw visions of
astounding character. Monsters of the deep were side by side with the
mighty elephantine shepherd. Gigantic fish and animals seemed to form
strange conjunctions.

The raft took a sudden turn, whirled round, entered another tunnel--this
time illumined in a most singular manner. The roof was formed of porous
stalactite, through which a moonlit vapor appeared to pass, casting its
brilliant light upon our gaunt and haggard figures. The light increased
as we advanced, while the roof ascended; until at last, we were once
more in a kind of water cavern, the lofty dome of which disappeared in a
luminous cloud!

A rugged cavern of small extent appeared to offer a halting place to our
weary bodies.

My uncle and the guide moved as men in a dream. I was afraid to waken
them, knowing the danger of such a sudden start. I seated myself beside
them to watch.

As I did so, I became aware of something moving in the distance, which
at once fascinated my eyes. It was floating, apparently, upon the
surface of the water, advancing by means of what at first appeared
paddles. I looked with glaring eyes. One glance told me that it was
something monstrous.

But what?

It was the great "shark-crocodile" of the early writers on geology.
About the size of an ordinary whale, with hideous jaws and two gigantic
eyes, it advanced. Its eyes fixed on me with terrible sternness. Some
indefinite warning told me that it had marked me for its own.

I attempted to rise--to escape, no matter where, but my knees shook
under me; my limbs trembled violently; I almost lost my senses. And
still the mighty monster advanced. My uncle and the guide made no effort
to save themselves.

With a strange noise, like none other I had ever heard, the beast came
on. His jaws were at least seven feet apart, and his distended mouth
looked large enough to have swallowed a boatful of men.

We were about ten feet distant when I discovered that much as his body
resembled that of a crocodile, his mouth was wholly that of a shark.

His twofold nature now became apparent. To snatch us up at a mouthful it
was necessary for him to turn on his back, which motion necessarily
caused his legs to kick up helplessly in the air.

I actually laughed even in the very jaws of death!

But next minute, with a wild cry, I darted away into the interior of the
cave, leaving my unhappy comrades to their fate! This cavern was deep
and dreary. After about a hundred yards, I paused and looked around.

The whole floor, composed of sand and malachite, was strewn with bones,
freshly gnawed bones of reptiles and fish, with a mixture of mammalia.
My very soul grew sick as my body shuddered with horror. I had truly,
according to the old proverb, fallen out of the frying pan into the
fire. Some beast larger and more ferocious even than the shark-crocodile
inhabited this den.

What could I do? The mouth of the cave was guarded by one ferocious
monster, the interior was inhabited by something too hideous to
contemplate. Flight was impossible!

Only one resource remained, and that was to find some small hiding place
to which the fearful denizens of the cavern could not penetrate. I gazed
wildly around, and at last discovered a fissure in the rock, to which I
rushed in the hope of recovering my scattered senses.

Crouching down, I waited shivering as in an ague fit. No man is brave in
presence of an earthquake, or a bursting boiler, or an exploding
torpedo. I could not be expected to feel much courage in presence of the
fearful fate that appeared to await me.

An hour passed. I heard all the time a strange rumbling outside the
cave.

What was the fate of my unhappy companions? It was impossible for me to
pause to inquire. My own wretched existence was all I could think of.

Suddenly a groaning, as of fifty bears in a fight, fell upon my
ears--hisses, spitting, moaning, hideous to hear--and then I saw--

Never, were ages to pass over my head, shall I forget the horrible
apparition.

It was the Ape Gigans!

Fourteen feet high, covered with coarse hair, of a blackish brown, the
hair on the arms, from the shoulder to the elbow joints, pointing
downwards, while that from the wrist to the elbow pointed upwards, it
advanced. Its arms were as long as its body, while its legs were
prodigious. It had thick, long, and sharply pointed teeth--like a
mammoth saw.

It struck its breast as it came on smelling and sniffing, reminding me
of the stories we read in our early childhood of giants who ate the
Flesh of men and little boys!

Suddenly it stopped. My heart beat wildly, for I was conscious that,
somehow or other, the fearful monster had smelled me out and was peering
about with his hideous eyes to try and discover my whereabouts.

My reading, which as a rule is a blessing, but which on this occasion,
seemed momentarily to prove a curse, told me the real truth. It was the
Ape Gigans, the antediluvian gorilla.

Yes! This awful monster, confined by good fortune to the interior of the
earth, was the progenitor of the hideous monster of Africa.

He glared wildly about, seeking something--doubtless myself. I gave
myself up for lost. No hope of safety or escape seemed to remain.

At this moment, just as my eyes appeared to close in death, there came a
strange noise from the entrance of the cave; and turning, the gorilla
evidently recognized some enemy more worthy his prodigious size and
strength. It was the huge shark-crocodile, which perhaps having disposed
of my friends, was coming in search of further prey.

The gorilla placed himself on the defensive, and clutching a bone some
seven or eight feet in length, a perfect club, aimed a deadly blow at
the hideous beast, which reared upwards and fell with all its weight
upon its adversary.

A terrible combat, the details of which it is impossible to give, now
ensued. The struggle was awful and ferocious, I, however, did not wait
to witness the result. Regarding myself as the object of contention, I
determined to remove from the presence of the victor. I slid down from
my hiding place, reached the ground, and gliding against the wall,
strove to gain the open mouth of the cavern.

But I had not taken many steps when the fearful clamor ceased, to be
followed by a mumbling and groaning which appeared to be indicative of
victory.

I looked back and saw the huge ape, gory with blood, coming after me
with glaring eyes, with dilated nostrils that gave forth two columns of
heated vapor. I could feel his hot and fetid breath on my neck; and with
a horrid jump--awoke from my nightmare sleep.

Yes--it was all a dream. I was still on the raft with my uncle and the
guide.

The relief was not instantaneous, for under the influence of the hideous
nightmare my senses had become numbed. After a while, however, my
feelings were tranquilized. The first of my perceptions which returned
in full force was that of hearing. I listened with acute and attentive
ears. All was still as death. All I comprehended was silence. To the
roaring of the waters, which had filled the gallery with awful
reverberations, succeeded perfect peace.

After some little time my uncle spoke, in a low and scarcely audible
tone: "Harry, boy, where are you?"

"I am here," was my faint rejoinder.

"Well, don't you see what has happened? We are going upwards."

"My dear uncle, what can you mean?" was my half-delirious reply.

"Yes, I tell you we are ascending rapidly. Our downward journey is quite
checked."

I held out my hand, and, after some little difficulty, succeeded in
touching the wall. My hand was in an instant covered with blood. The
skin was torn from the flesh. We were ascending with extraordinary
rapidity.

"The torch--the torch!" cried the Professor, wildly; "it must be
lighted."

Hans, the guide, after many vain efforts, at last succeeded in lighting
it, and the flame, having now nothing to prevent its burning, shed a
tolerably clear light. We were enabled to form an approximate idea of
the truth.

"It is just as I thought," said my uncle, after a moment or two of
silent attention. "We are in a narrow well about four fathoms square.
The waters of the great inland sea, having reached the bottom of the
gulf are now forcing themselves up the mighty shaft. As a natural
consequence, we are being cast upon the summit of the waters."

"That I can see," was my lugubrious reply; "but where will this shaft
end, and to what fall are we likely to be exposed?"

"Of that I am as ignorant as yourself. All I know is, that we should be
prepared for the worst. We are going up at a fearfully rapid rate. As
far as I can judge, we are ascending at the rate of two fathoms a
second, of a hundred and twenty fathoms a minute, or rather more than
three and a half leagues an hour. At this rate, our fate will soon be a
matter of certainty."

"No doubt of it," was my reply. "The great concern I have now, however,
is to know whether this shaft has any issue. It may end in a granite
roof--in which case we shall be suffocated by compressed air, or dashed
to atoms against the top. I fancy, already, that the air is beginning to
be close and condensed. I have a difficulty in breathing."

This might be fancy, or it might be the effect of our rapid motion, but
I certainly felt a great oppression of the chest.

"Henry," said the Professor, "I do believe that the situation is to a
certain extent desperate. There remain, however, many chances of
ultimate safety, and I have, in my own mind, been revolving them over,
during your heavy but agitated sleep. I have come to this logical
conclusion--whereas we may at any moment perish, so at any moment we may
be saved! We need, therefore, prepare ourselves for whatever may turn up
in the great chapter of accidents."

"But what would you have us do?" I cried. "Are we not utterly helpless?"

"No! While there is life there is hope. At all events, there is one
thing we can do--eat, and thus obtain strength to face victory or
death."

As he spoke, I looked at my uncle with a haggard glance. I had put off
the fatal communication as long as possible. It was now forced upon me,
and I must tell him the truth.

Still I hesitated.

"Eat," I said, in a deprecating tone as if there were no hurry.

"Yes, and at once. I feel like a starving prisoner," he said, rubbing
his yellow and shivering hands together.

And, turning round to the guide, he spoke some hearty, cheering words,
as I judged from his tone, in Danish. Hans shook his head in a terribly
significant manner. I tried to look unconcerned.

"What!" cried the Professor, "you do not mean to say that all our
provisions are lost?"

"Yes," was my lowly spoken reply, as I held out something in my hand,
"this morsel of dried meat is all that remains for us three."

My uncle gazed at me as if he could not fully appreciate the meaning of
my words. The blow seemed to stun him by its severity. I allowed him to
reflect for some moments.

"Well," said I, after a short pause, "what do you think now? Is there
any chance of our escaping from our horrible subterranean dangers? Are
we not doomed to perish in the great hollows of the centre of the
earth?"

But my pertinent questions brought no answer. My uncle either heard me
not, or appeared not to do so.

And in this way a whole hour passed. Neither of us cared to speak. For
myself, I began to feel the most fearful and devouring hunger. My
companions, doubtless, felt the same horrible tortures, but neither of
them would touch the wretched morsel of meat that remained. It lay
there, a last remnant of all our great preparations for the mad and
senseless journey!

I looked back, with wonderment, to my own folly. Fully was I aware that,
despite his enthusiasm, and the ever-to-be-hated scroll of Saknussemm,
my uncle should never have started on his perilous voyage. What memories
of the happy past, what previsions of the horrible future, now filled my
brain!

Hunger, prolonged, is temporary madness! The brain is at work without
its required food, and the most fantastic notions fill the mind.
Hitherto I had never known what hunger really meant. I was likely to
understand it now.

And yet, three months before I could tell my terrible story of
starvation, as I thought it. As a boy I used to make frequent excursions
in the neighborhood of the Professor's house.

My uncle always acted on system, and he believed that, in addition to
the day of rest and worship, there should be a day of recreation. In
consequence, I was always free to do as I liked on a Wednesday.

Now, as I had a notion to combine the useful and the agreeable, my
favorite pastime was birds' nesting. I had one of the best collections
of eggs in all the town. They were classified, and under glass cases.

There was a certain wood, which, by rising at early morn, and taking the
cheap train, I could reach at eleven in the morning. Here I would
botanize or geologize at my will. My uncle was always glad of specimens
for his herbarium, and stones to examine. When I had filled my wallet, I
proceeded to search for nests.

After about two hours of hard work, I, one day, sat down by a stream to
eat my humble but copious lunch. How the remembrance of the spiced
sausage, the wheaten loaf, and the beer, made my mouth water now! I
would have given every prospect of worldly wealth for such a meal. But
to my story.

While seated thus at my leisure, I looked up at the ruins of an old
castle, at no great distance. It was the remains of an historical
dwelling, ivy-clad, and now falling to pieces.

While looking, I saw two eagles circling about the summit of a lofty
tower. I soon became satisfied that there was a nest. Now, in all my
collection, I lacked eggs of the native eagle and the large owl.

My mind was made up. I would reach the summit of that tower, or perish
in the attempt. I went nearer, and surveyed the ruins. The old
staircase, years before, had fallen in. The outer walls were, however,
intact. There was no chance that way, unless I looked to the ivy solely
for support. This was, as I soon found out, futile.

There remained the chimney, which still went up to the top, and had once
served to carry off the smoke from every story of the tower.

Up this I determined to venture. It was narrow, rough, and therefore the
more easily climbed. I took off my coat and crept into the chimney.
Looking up, I saw a small, light opening, proclaiming the summit of the
chimney.

Up--up I went, for some time using my hands and knees, after the fashion
of a chimney sweep. It was slow work, but, there being continual
projections, the task was comparatively easy. In this way, I reached
halfway. The chimney now became narrower. The atmosphere was close, and,
at last, to end the matter, I stuck fast. I could ascend no higher.

There could be no doubt of this, and there remained no resource but to
descend, and give up my glorious prey in despair. I yielded to fate and
endeavored to descend. But I could not move. Some unseen and mysterious
obstacle intervened and stopped me. In an instant the full horror of my
situation seized me.

I was unable to move either way, and was doomed to a terrible and
horrible death, that of starvation. In a boy's mind, however, there is
an extraordinary amount of elasticity and hope, and I began to think of
all sorts of plans to escape my gloomy fate.

In the first place, I required no food just at present, having had an
excellent meal, and was therefore allowed time for reflection. My first
thought was to try and move the mortar with my hand. Had I possessed a
knife, something might have been done, but that useful instrument I had
left in my coat pocket.

I soon found that all efforts of this kind were vain and useless, and
that all I could hope to do was to wriggle downwards.

But though I jerked and struggled, and strove to turn, it was all in
vain. I could not move an inch, one way or the other. And time flew
rapidly. My early rising probably contributed to the fact that I felt
sleepy, and gradually gave way to the sensation of drowsiness.

I slept, and awoke in darkness, ravenously hungry.

Night had come, and still I could not move. I was tight bound, and did
not succeed in changing my position an inch. I groaned aloud. Never
since the days of my happy childhood, when it was a hardship to go from
meal to meal without eating, had I really experienced hunger. The
sensation was as novel as it was painful. I began now to lose my head
and to scream and cry out in my agony. Something appeared, startled by
my noise. It was a harmless lizard, but it appeared to me a loathsome
reptile. Again I made the old ruins resound with my cries, and finally
so exhausted myself that I fainted.

How long I lay in a kind of trance or sleep I cannot say, but when again
I recovered consciousness it was day. How ill I felt, how hunger still
gnawed at me, it would be hard to say. I was too weak to scream now, far
too weak to struggle.

Suddenly I was startled by a roar.

"Are you there, Henry?" said the voice of my uncle; "are you there, my
boy?"

I could only faintly respond, but I also made a desperate effort to
turn. Some mortar fell. To this I owed my being discovered. When the
search took place, it was easily seen that mortar and small pieces of
stone had recently fallen from above. Hence my uncle's cry.

"Be calm," he cried, "if we pull down the whole ruin, you shall be
saved."

They were delicious words, but I had little hope.

Soon however, about a quarter of an hour later I heard a voice above me,
at one of the upper fireplaces.

"Are you below or above?"

"Below," was my reply.

In an instant a basket was lowered with milk, a biscuit, and an egg. My
uncle was fearful to be too ready with his supply of food. I drank the
milk first, for thirst had nearly deadened hunger. I then, much
refreshed, ate my bread and hard egg.

They were now at work at the wall. I could hear a pickax. Wishing to
escape all danger from this terrible weapon I made a desperate struggle,
and the belt, which surrounded my waist and which had been hitched on a
stone, gave way. I was free, and only escaped falling down by a rapid
motion of my hands and knees.

In ten minutes more I was in my uncle's arms, after being two days and
nights in that horrible prison. My occasional delirium prevented me from
counting time.

I was weeks recovering from that awful starvation adventure; and yet
what was that to the hideous sufferings I now endured?

After dreaming for some time, and thinking of this and other matters, I
once more looked around me. We were still ascending with fearful
rapidity. Every now and then the air appeared to check our respiration
as it does that of aeronauts when the ascension of the balloon is too
rapid. But if they feel a degree of cold in proportion to the elevation
they attain in the atmosphere, we experienced quite a contrary effect.
The heat began to increase in a most threatening and exceptional manner.
I cannot tell exactly the mean, but I think it must have reached one
hundred twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit.

What was the meaning of this extraordinary change in the temperature? As
far as we had hitherto gone, facts had proved the theories of Davy and
of Lidenbrock to be correct. Until now, all the peculiar conditions of
refractory rocks, of electricity, of magnetism, had modified the general
laws of nature, and had created for us a moderate temperature; for the
theory of the central fire, remained, in my eyes, the only explainable
one.

Were we, then, going to reach a position in which these phenomena were
to be carried out in all their rigor, and in which the heat would reduce
the rocks to a state of fusion?

Such was my not unnatural fear, and I did not conceal the fact from my
uncle. My way of doing so might be cold and heartless, but I could not
help it.

"If we are not drowned, or smashed into pancakes, and if we do not die
of starvation, we have the satisfaction of knowing that we must be
burned alive."

My uncle, in presence of this brusque attack, simply shrugged his
shoulders, and resumed his reflections--whatever they might be.

An hour passed away, and except that there was a slight increase in the
temperature no incident modified the situation.

My uncle at last, of his own accord, broke silence.

"Well, Henry, my boy," he said, in a cheerful way, "we must make up our
minds."

"Make up our minds to what?" I asked, in considerable surprise.

"Well--to something. We must at whatever risk recruit our physical
strength. If we make the fatal mistake of husbanding our little remnant
of food, we may probably prolong our wretched existence a few hours--but
we shall remain weak to the end."

"Yes," I growled, "to the end. That, however, will not keep us long
waiting."

"Well, only let a chance of safety present itself--only allow that a
moment of action be necessary--where shall we find the means of action
if we allow ourselves to be reduced to physical weakness by inanition?"

"When this piece of meat is devoured, Uncle, what hope will there remain
unto us?"

"None, my dear Henry, none. But will it do you any good to devour it
with your eyes? You appear to me to reason like one without will or
decision, like a being without energy."

"Then," cried I, exasperated to a degree which is scarcely to be
explained, "you do not mean to tell me--that you--that you--have not
lost all hope."

"Certainly not," replied the Professor with consummate coolness.

"You mean to tell me, Uncle, that we shall get out of this monstrous
subterranean shaft?"

"While there is life there is hope. I beg to assert, Henry, that as long
as a man's heart beats, as long as a man's flesh quivers, I do not allow
that a being gifted with thought and will can allow himself to despair."

What a nerve! The man placed in a position like that we occupied must
have been very brave to speak like this.

"Well," I cried, "what do you mean to do?"

"Eat what remains of the food we have in our hands; let us swallow the
last crumb. It will bel Heaven willing, our last repast. Well, never
mind--instead of being exhausted skeletons, we shall be men."

"True," muttered I in a despairing tone, "let us take our fill."

"We must," replied my uncle, with a deep sigh, "call it what you will."

My uncle took a piece of the meat that remained, and some crusts of
biscuit which had escaped the wreck. He divided the whole into three
parts.

Each had one pound of food to last him as long as he remained in the
interior of the earth.

Each now acted in accordance with his own private character.

My uncle, the Professor, ate greedily, but evidently without appetite,
eating simply from some mechanical motion. I put the food inside my
lips, and hungry as I was, chewed my morsel without pleasure, and
without satisfaction.

Hans, the guide, just as if he had been eider-down hunting, swallowed
every mouthful, as though it were a usual affair. He looked like a man
equally prepared to enjoy superfluity or total want.

Hans, in all probability, was no more used to starvation than ourselves,
but his hardy Icelandic nature had prepared him for many sufferings. As
long as he received his three rix-dollars every Saturday night, he was
prepared for anything.

The fact was, Hans never troubled himself about much except his money.
He had undertaken to serve a certain man at so much per week, and no
matter what evils befell his employer or himself, he never found fault
or grumbled, so long as his wages were duly paid.

Suddenly my uncle roused himself. He had seen a smile on the face of our
guide. I could not make it out.

"What is the matter?" said my uncle.

"Schiedam," said the guide, producing a bottle of this precious fluid.

We drank. My uncle and myself will own to our dying day that hence we
derived strength to exist until the last bitter moment. That precious
bottle of Hollands was in reality only half full; but, under the
circumstances, it was nectar.

It took some minutes for myself and my uncle to form a decided opinion
on the subject. The worthy Professor swallowed about half a pint and did
not seem able to drink any more.

"Fortrafflig," said Hans, swallowing nearly all that was left.

"Excellent--very good," said my uncle, with as much gusto as if he had
just left the steps of the club at Hamburg.

I had begun to feel as if there had been one gleam of hope. Now all
thought of the future vanished!

We had consumed our last ounce of food, and it was five o'clock in the
morning!

Man's constitution is so peculiar that his health is purely a negative
matter. No sooner is the rage of hunger appeased than it becomes
difficult to comprehend the meaning of starvation. It is only when you
suffer that you really understand.

As to anyone who has not endured privation having any notion of the
matter, it is simply absurd.

With us, after a long fast, some mouthfuls of bread and meat, a little
moldy biscuit and salt beef triumphed over all our previous gloomy and
saturnine thoughts.

Nevertheless, after this repast each gave way to his own reflections. I
wondered what were those of Hans--the man of the extreme north, who was
yet gifted with the fatalistic resignation of Oriental character. But
the utmost stretch of the imagination would not allow me to realize the
truth. As for my individual self, my thoughts had ceased to be anything
but memories of the past, and were all connected with that upper world
which I never should have left. I saw it all now, the beautiful house in
the Konigstrasse, my poor Gretchen, the good Martha; they all passed
before my mind like visions of the past. Every time any of the
lugubrious groanings which were to be distinguished in the hollows
around fell upon my ears, I fancied I heard the distant murmur of the
great cities above my head.

As for my uncle, always thinking of his science, he examined the nature
of the shaft by means of a torch. He closely examined the different
strata one above the other, in order to recognize his situation by
geological theory. This calculation, or rather this estimation, could by
no means be anything but approximate. But a learned man, a philosopher,
is nothing if not a philosopher, when he keeps his ideas calm and
collected; and certainly the Professor possessed this quality to
perfection.

I heard him, as I sat in silence, murmuring words of geological science.
As I understood his object and his meaning, I could not but interest
myself despite my preoccupation in that terrible hour.

"Eruptive granite," he said to himself, "we are still in the primitive
epoch. But we are going up--going up, still going up. But who knows? Who
knows?"

Then he still hoped. He felt along the vertical sides of the shaft with
his hand, and some few minutes later, he would go on again in the
following style:

"This is gneiss. This is mica schist--siliceous mineral. Good again;
this is the epoch of transition, at all events, we are close to
them--and then, and then--"

What could the Professor mean? Could he, by any conceivable means,
measure the thickness of the crust of the earth suspended above our
heads? Did he possess any possible means of making any approximation to
this calculation? No.

The manometer was wanting, and no summary estimation could take the
place of it.

And yet, as we progressed, the temperature increased in the most
extraordinary degree, and I began to feel as if I were bathed in a hot
and burning atmosphere. Never before had I felt anything like it. I
could only compare it to the hot vapor from an iron foundry, when the
liquid iron is in a state of ebullition and runs over. By degrees, and
one after the other, Hans, my uncle, and myself had taken off our coats
and waistcoats. They were unbearable. Even the slightest garment was not
only uncomfortable, but the cause of extreme suffering.

"Are we ascending to a living fire?" I cried; when, to my horror and
astonishment, the heat became greater than before.

"No, no," said my uncle, "it is simply impossible, quite impossible."

"And yet," said I, touching the side of the shaft with my naked hand,
"this wall is literally burning."

At this moment, feeling as I did that the sides of this extraordinary
wall were red hot, I plunged my hands into the water to cool them. I
drew them back with a cry of despair.

"The water is boiling!" I cried.

My uncle, the Professor, made no reply other than a gesture of rage and
despair.

Something very like the truth had probably struck his imagination.

But I could take no share in either what was going on, or in his
speculations. An invincible dread had taken possession of my brain and
soul. I could only look forward to an immediate catastrophe, such a
catastrophe as not even the most vivid imagination could have thought
of. An idea, at first vague and uncertain, was gradually being changed
into certainty.

I tremulously rejected it at first, but it forced itself upon me by
degrees with extreme obstinacy. It was so terrible an idea that I
scarcely dared to whisper it to myself.

And yet all the while certain, and as it were, involuntary observations
determined my convictions. By the doubtful glare of the torch, I could
make out some singular changes in the granitic strata; a strange and
terrible phenomenon was about to be produced, in which electricity
played a part.

Then this boiling water, this terrible and excessive heat? I determined
as a last resource to examine the compass.

The compass had gone mad!

Yes, wholly stark staring mad. The needle jumped from pole to pole with
sudden and surprising jerks, ran round, or as it is said, boxed the
compass, and then ran suddenly back again as if it had the vertigo.

I was aware that, according to the best acknowledged theories, it was a
received notion that the mineral crust of the globe is never, and never
has been, in a state of complete repose.

It is perpetually undergoing the modifications caused by the
decomposition of internal matter, the agitation consequent on the
flowing of extensive liquid currents, the excessive action of magnetism
which tends to shake it incessantly, at a time when even the
multitudinous beings on its surface do not suspect the seething process
to be going on.

Still this phenomenon would not have alarmed me alone; it would not have
aroused in my mind a terrible, an awful idea.

But other facts could not allow my self-delusion to last.

Terrible detonations, like Heaven's artillery, began to multiply
themselves with fearful intensity. I could only compare them with the
noise made by hundreds of heavily laden chariots being madly driven over
a stone pavement. It was a continuous roll of heavy thunder.

And then the mad compass, shaken by the wild electric phenomena,
confirmed me in my rapidly formed opinion. The mineral crust was about
to burst, the heavy granite masses were about to rejoin, the fissure was
about to close, the void was about to be filled up, and we poor atoms to
be crushed in its awful embrace!

"Uncle, Uncle!" I cried, "we are wholly, irretrievably lost!"

"What, then, my young friend, is your new cause of terror and alarm?" he
said in his calmest manner. "What fear you now?"

"What do I fear now!" I cried in fierce and angry tones. "Do you not see
that the walls of the shaft are in motion? Do you not see that the solid
granite masses are cracking? Do you not feel the terrible, torrid heat?
Do you not observe the awful boiling water on which we float? Do you not
remark this mad needle? Every sign and portent of an awful earthquake!"

My uncle coolly shook his head.

"An earthquake," he replied in the most calm and provoking tone.

"Yes."

"My nephew, I tell you that you are utterly mistaken," he continued.

"Do you not, can you not, recognize all the well-known symtons--"

"Of an earthquake? By no means. I am expecting something far more
important."

"My brain is strained beyond endurance--what, what do you mean?" I
cried.

"An eruption, Harry."

"An eruption," I gasped. "We are, then, in the volcanic shaft of a
crater in full action and vigor."

"I have every reason to think so," said the Professor in a smiling tone,
"and I beg to tell you that it is the most fortunate thing that could
happen to us."

The most fortunate thing! Had my uncle really and truly gone mad? What
did he mean by these awful words--what did he mean by this terrible
calm, this solemn smile?

"What!" cried I, in the height of my exasperation, "we are on the way to
an eruption, are we? Fatality has cast us into a well of burning and
boiling lava, of rocks on fire, of boiling water, in a word, filled with
every kind of eruptive matter? We are about to be expelled, thrown up,
vomited, spit out of the interior of the earth, in common with huge
blocks of granite, with showers of cinders and scoriae, in a wild
whirlwind of flame, and you say--the most fortunate thing which could
happen to us."

"Yes," replied the Professor, looking at me calmly from under his
spectacles, "it is the only chance which remains to us of ever escaping
from the interior of the earth to the light of day."

It is quite impossible that I can put on paper the thousand strange,
wild thoughts which followed this extraordinary announcement.

But my uncle was right, quite right, and never had he appeared to me so
audacious and so convinced as when he looked me calmly in the face and
spoke of the chances of an eruption--of our being cast upon Mother Earth
once more through the gaping crater of a volcano!

Nevertheless, while we were speaking we were still ascending; we passed
the whole night going up, or to speak more scientifically, in an
ascensional motion. The fearful noise redoubled; I was ready to
suffocate. I seriously believed that my last hour was approaching, and
yet, so strange is imagination, all I thought of was some childish
hypothesis or other. In such circumstances you do not choose your own
thoughts. They overcome you.

It was quite evident that we were being cast upwards by eruptive matter;
under the raft there was a mass of boiling water, and under this was a
heavier mass of lava, and an aggregate of rocks which, on reaching the
summit of the water, would be dispersed in every direction.

That we were inside the chimney of a volcano there could no longer be
the shadow of a doubt. Nothing more terrible could be conceived!

But on this occasion, instead of Sneffels, an old and extinct volcano,
we were inside a mountain of fire in full activity. Several times I
found myself asking, what mountain was it, and on what part of the world
we should be shot out. As if it were of any consequence!

In the northern regions, there could be no reasonable doubt about that.
Before it went decidedly mad, the compass had never made the slightest
mistake. From the cape of Saknussemm, we had been swept away to the
northward many hundreds of leagues. Now the question was, were we once
more under Iceland--should we be belched forth on to the earth through
the crater of Mount Hecla, or should we reappear through one of the
other seven fire funnels of the island? Taking in my mental vision a
radius of five hundred leagues to the westward, I could see under this
parallel only the little-known volcanoes of the northwest coast of
America.

To the east one only existed somewhere about the eightieth degree of
latitude, the Esk, upon the island of Jan Mayen, not far from the frozen
regions of Spitsbergen.

It was not craters that were wanting, and many of them were big enough
to vomit a whole army; all I wished to know was the particular one
towards which we were making with such fearful velocity.

I often think now of my folly: as if I should ever have expected to
escape!

Towards morning, the ascending motion became greater and greater. If the
degree of heat increased instead of decreasing, as we approached the
surface of the earth, it was simply because the causes were local and
wholly due to volcanic influence. Our very style of locomotion left in
my mind no doubt upon the subject. An enormous force, a force of several
hundreds of atmospheres produced by the vapors accumulated and long
compressed in the interior of the earth, was hoisting us upwards with
irresistible power.

But though we were approaching the light of day, to what fearful dangers
were we about to be exposed?

Instant death appeared the only fate which we could expect or
contemplate.

Soon a dim, sepulchral light penetrated the vertical gallery, which
became wider and wider. I could make out to the right and left long dark
corridors like immense tunnels, from which awful and horrid vapors
poured out. Tongues of fire, sparkling and crackling, appeared about to
lick us up.

The hour had come!

"Look, Uncle, look!" I cried.

"Well, what you see are the great sulphurous flames. Nothing more common
in connection with an eruption."

"But if they lap us round!" I angrily replied.

"They will not lap us round," was his quiet and serene answer.

"But it will be all the same in the end if they stifle us," I cried.

"We shall not be stifled. The gallery is rapidly becoming wider and
wider, and if it be necessary, we will presently leave the raft and take
refuge in some fissure in the rock."

"But the water, the water, which is continually ascending?" I
despairingly replied.

"There is no longer any water, Harry," he answered, "but a kind of lava
paste, which is heaving us up, in company with itself, to the mouth of
the crater."

In truth, the liquid column of water had wholly disappeared to give
place to dense masses of boiling eruptive matter. The temperature was
becoming utterly insupportable, and a thermometer exposed to this
atmosphere would have marked between one hundred and eighty-nine and one
hundred ninety degrees Fahrenheit.

Perspiration rushed from every pore. But for the extraordinary rapidity
of our ascent we should have been stifled.

Nevertheless, the Professor did not carry out his proposition of
abandoning the raft; and he did quite wisely. Those few ill-joined beams
offered, anyway, a solid surface--a support which elsewhere must have
utterly failed us.

Towards eight o'clock in the morning a new incident startled us. The
ascensional movement suddenly ceased. The raft became still and
motionless.

"What is the matter now?" I said, querulously, very much startled by
this change.

"A simple halt," replied my uncle.

"Is the eruption about to fail?" I asked.

"I hope not."

Without making any reply, I rose. I tried to look around me. Perhaps the
raft, checked by some projecting rock, opposed a momentary resistance to
the eruptive mass. In this case, it was absolutely necessary to release
it as quickly as possible.

Nothing of the kind had occurred. The column of cinders, of scoriae, of
broken rocks and earth, had wholly ceased to ascend.

"I tell you, Uncle, that the eruption has stopped," was my oracular
decision.

"Ah," said my uncle, "you think so, my boy. You are wrong. Do not be in
the least alarmed; this sudden moment of calm will not last long, be
assured. It has already endured five minutes, and before we are many
minutes older we shall be continuing our journey to the mouth of the
crater."

All the time he was speaking the Professor continued to consult his
chronometer, and he was probably right in his prognostics. Soon the raft
resumed its motion, in a very rapid and disorderly way, which lasted two
minutes or thereabout; and then again it stopped as suddenly as before.

"Good," said my uncle, observing the hour, "in ten we shall start
again."

"In ten minutes?"

"Yes--precisely. We have to do with a volcano, the eruption of which is
intermittent. We are compelled to breathe just as it does."

Nothing could be more true. At the exact minute he had indicated, we
were again launched on high with extreme rapidity. Not to be cast off
the raft, it was necessary to hold on to the beams. Then the hoist again
ceased.

Many times since have I thought of this singular phenomenon without
being able to find for it any satisfactory explanation. Nevertheless, it
appeared quite clear to me, that we were not in the principal chimney of
the volcano, but in an accessory conduit, where we felt the counter
shock of the great and principal tunnel filled by burning lava.

It is impossible for me to say how many times this maneuver was
repeated. All that I can remember is, that on every ascensional motion,
we were hoisted up with ever increasing velocity, as if we had been
launched from a huge projectile. During the sudden halts we were nearly
stifled; during the moments of projection the hot air took away our
breath.

I thought for a moment of the voluptuous joy of suddenly finding myself
in the hyperborean regions with the cold thirty degrees below zero!

My exalted imagination pictured to itself the vast snowy plains of the
arctic regions, and I was impatient to roll myself on the icy carpet of
the North Pole.

By degrees my head, utterly overcome by a series of violent emotions,
began to give way to hallucination. I was delirious. Had it not been for
the powerful arms of Hans, the guide, I should have broken my head
against the granite masses of the shaft.

I have, in consequence, kept no account of what followed for many hours.
I have a vague and confused remembrance of continual detonations, of the
shaking of the huge granitic mass, and of the raft going round like a
spinning top. It floated on the stream of hot lava, amidst a falling
cloud of cinders. The huge flames roaring, wrapped us around.

A storm of wind which appeared to be cast forth from an immense
ventilator roused up the interior fires of the earth. It was a hot,
incandescent blast!

At last I saw the figure of Hans as if enveloped in the huge halo of
burning blaze, and no other sense remained to me but that sinister dread
which the condemned victim may be supposed to feel when led to the mouth
of a cannon, at the supreme moment when the shot is fired and his limbs
are dispersed into empty space.

When I opened my eyes I felt the hand of the guide clutching me firmly
by the belt. With his other hand he supported my uncle. I was not
grievously wounded, but bruised all over in the most remarkable manner.

After a moment I looked around, and found that I was lying down on the
slope of a mountain not two yards from a yawning gulf into which I
should have fallen had I made the slightest false step. Hans had saved
me from death, while I rolled insensible on the flanks of the crater.

"Where are we?" dreamily asked my uncle, who literally appeared to be
disgusted at having returned to earth.

The eider-down hunter simply shrugged his shoulders as a mark of total
ignorance.

"In Iceland?" said I, not positively but interrogatively.

"Nej," said Hans.

"How do you mean?" cried the Professor; "no--what are your reasons?"

"Hans is wrong," said I, rising.

After all the innumerable surprises of this journey, a yet more singular
one was reserved to us. I expected to see a cone covered by snow, by
extensive and widespread glaciers, in the midst of the arid deserts of
the extreme northern regions, beneath the full rays of a polar sky,
beyond the highest latitudes.

But contrary to all our expectations, I, my uncle, and the Icelander,
were cast upon the slope of a mountain calcined by the burning rays of a
sun which was literally baking us with its fires.

I could not believe my eyes, but the actual heat which affected my body
allowed me no chance of doubting. We came out of the crater half naked,
and the radiant star from which we had asked nothing for two months, was
good enough to be prodigal to us of light and warmth--a light and warmth
we could easily have dispensed with.

When our eyes were accustomed to the light we had lost sight of so long,
I used them to rectify the errors of my imagination. Whatever happened,
we should have been at Spitsbergen, and I was in no humor to yield to
anything but the most absolute proof.

After some delay, the Professor spoke.

"Hem!" he said, in a hesitating kind of way, "it really does not look
like Iceland."

"But supposing it were the island of Jan Mayen?" I ventured to observe.

"Not in the least, my boy. This is not one of the volcanoes of the
north, with its hills of granite and its crown of snow."

"Nevertheless--"

"Look, look, my boy," said the Professor, as dogmatically as usual.

Right above our heads, at a great height, opened the crater of a volcano
from which escaped, from one quarter of an hour to the other, with a
very loud explosion, a lofty jet of flame mingled with pumice stone,
cinders, and lava. I could feel the convulsions of nature in the
mountain, which breathed like a huge whale, throwing up from time to
time fire and air through its enormous vents.

Below, and floating along a slope of considerable angularity, the stream
of eruptive matter spread away to a depth which did not give the volcano
a height of three hundred fathoms.

Its base disappeared in a perfect forest of green trees, among which I
perceived olives, fig trees, and vines loaded with rich grapes.

Certainly this was not the ordinary aspect of the arctic regions. About
that there could not be the slightest doubt.

When the eye was satisfied at its glimpse of this verdant expanse, it
fell upon the waters of a lovely sea or beautiful lake, which made of
this enchanted land an island of not many leagues in extent.

On the side of the rising sun was to be seen a little port, crowded with
houses, and near which the boats and vessels of peculiar build were
floating upon azure waves.

Beyond, groups of islands rose above the liquid plain, so numerous and
close together as to resemble a vast beehive.

Towards the setting sun, some distant shores were to be made out on the
edge of the horizon. Some presented the appearance of blue mountains of
harmonious conformation; upon others, much more distant, there appeared
a prodigiously lofty cone, above the summit of which hung dark and heavy
clouds.

Towards the north, an immense expanse of water sparkled beneath the
solar rays, occasionally allowing the extremity of a mast or the
convexity of a sail bellying to the wind, to be seen.

The unexpected character of such a scene added a hundredfold to its
marvelous beauties.

"Where can we be?" I asked, speaking in a low and solemn voice.

Hans shut his eyes with an air of indifference, and my uncle looked on
without clearly understanding.

"Whatever this mountain may be," he said, at last, "I must confess it is
rather warm. The explosions do not leave off, and I do not think it is
worthwhile to have left the interior of a volcano and remain here to
receive a huge piece of rock upon one's head. Let us carefully descend
the mountain and discover the real state of the case. To confess the
truth, I am dying of hunger and thirst."

Decidedly the Professor was no longer a truly reflective character. For
myself, forgetting all my necessities, ignoring my fatigues and
sufferings, I should have remained still for several hours longer--but
it was necessary to follow my companions.

The slope of the volcano was very steep and slippery; we slid over piles
of ashes, avoiding the streams of hot lava which glided about like fiery
serpents. Still, while we were advancing, I spoke with extreme
volubility, for my imagination was too full not to explode in words.

"We are in Asia!" I exclaimed; "we are on the coast of India, in the
great Malay islands, in the centre of Oceania. We have crossed the one
half of the globe to come out right at the antipodes of Europe!"

"But the compass!" exclaimed my uncle; "explain that to me!"

"Yes--the compass," I said with considerable hesitation. "I grant that
is a difficulty. According to it, we have always been going northward."

"Then it lied."

"Hem--to say it lied is rather a harsh word," was my answer.

"Then we are at the North Pole--"

"The Pole--no--well--well I give it up," was my reply.

The plain truth was, that there was no explanation possible. I could
make nothing of it.

And all the while we were approaching this beautiful verdure, hunger and
thirst tormented me fearfully. Happily, after two long hours' march, a
beautiful country spread out before us, covered by olives, pomegranates,
and vines, which appeared to belong to anybody and everybody. In any
event, in the state of destitution into which we had fallen, we were not
in a mood to ponder too scrupulously.

What delight it was to press these delicious fruits to our lips, and to
bite at grapes and pomegranates fresh from the vine.

Not far off, near some fresh and mossy grass, under the delicious shade
of some trees, I discovered a spring of fresh water, in which we
voluptuously laved our faces, hands, and feet.

While we were all giving way to the delights of new-found pleasures, a
little child appeared between two tufted olive trees.

"Ah," cried I, "an inhabitant of this happy country."

The little fellow was poorly dressed, weak, and suffering, and appeared
terribly alarmed at our appearance. Half-naked, with tangled, matted and
ragged beards, we did look supremely ill-favored; and unless the country
was a bandit land, we were not likely to alarm the inhabitants!

Just as the boy was about to take to his heels, Hans ran after him, and
brought him back, despite his cries and kicks.

My uncle tried to look as gentle as possible, and then spoke in German.

"What is the name of this mountain, my friend?"

The child made no reply.

"Good," said my uncle, with a very positive air of conviction, "we are
not in Germany."

He then made the same demand in English, of which language he was an
excellent scholar.

The child shook its head and made no reply. I began to be considerably
puzzled.

"Is he dumb?" cried the Professor, who was rather proud of his polyglot
knowledge of languages, and made the same demand in French.

The boy only stared in his face.

"I must perforce try him in Italian," said my uncle, with a shrug.

"Dove noi siamo?"

"Yes, tell me where we are?" I added impatiently and eagerly.

Again the boy remained silent.

"My fine fellow, do you or do you not mean to speak?" cried my uncle,
who began to get angry. He shook him, and spoke another dialect of the
Italian language.

"Come si noma questa isola?"--"What is the name of this island?"

"Stromboli," replied the rickety little shepherd, dashing away from Hans
and disappearing in the olive groves.

We thought little enough about him.

Stromboli! What effect on the imagination did these few words produce!
We were in the centre of the Mediterranean, amidst the eastern
archipelago of mythological memory, in the ancient Strongylos, where
AEolus kept the wind and the tempest chained up. And those blue
mountains, which rose towards the rising sun, were the mountains of
Calabria.

And that mighty volcano which rose on the southern horizon was Etna, the
fierce and celebrated Etna!

"Stromboli! Stromboli!" I repeated to myself.

My uncle played a regular accompaniment to my gestures and words. We
were singing together like an ancient chorus.

Ah--what a journey--what a marvelous and extraordinary journey! Here we
had entered the earth by one volcano, and we had come out by another.
And this other was situated more than twelve hundred leagues from
Sneffels from that drear country of Iceland cast away on the confines of
the earth. The wondrous changes of this expedition had transported us to
the most harmonious and beautiful of earthly lands. We had abandoned the
region of eternal snows for that of infinite verdure, and had left over
our heads the gray fog of the icy regions to come back to the azure sky
of Sicily!

After a delicious repast of fruits and fresh water, we again continued
our journey in order to reach the port of Stromboli. To say how we had
reached the island would scarcely have been prudent. The superstitious
character of the Italians would have been at work, and we should have
been called demons vomited from the infernal regions. It was therefore
necessary to pass for humble and unfortunate shipwrecked travelers. It
was certainly less striking and romantic, but it was decidedly safer.

As we advanced, I could hear my worthy uncle muttering to himself:

"But the compass. The compass most certainly marked north. This is a
fact I cannot explain in any way."

"Well, the fact is," said I, with an air of disdain, "we must not
explain anything. It will be much more easy."

"I should like to see a professor of the Johanneum Institution who is
unable to explain a cosmic phenomenon--it would indeed be strange."

And speaking thus, my uncle, half-naked, his leathern purse round his
loins, and his spectacles upon his nose, became once more the terrible
Professor of Mineralogy.

An hour after leaving the wood of olives, we reached the fort of San
Vicenza, where Hans demanded the price of his thirteenth week of
service. My uncle paid him, with very many warm shakes of the hand.

At that moment, if he did not indeed quite share our natural emotion, he
allowed his feelings so far to give way as to indulge in an
extraordinary expression for him.

With the tips of two fingers he gently pressed our hands and smiled.

This is the final conclusion of a narrative which will be probably
disbelieved even by people who are astonished at nothing. I am, however,
armed at all points against human incredulity.

We were kindly received by the Strombolite fishermen, who treated us as
shipwrecked travelers. They gave us clothes and food. After a delay of
forty-eight hours, on the 30th of September a little vessel took us to
Messina, where a few days of delightful and complete repose restored us
to ourselves.

On Friday, the 4th of October, we embarked in the Volturne, one of the
postal packets of the Imperial Messageries of France; and three days
later we landed at Marseilles, having no other care on our minds but
that of our precious but erratic compass. This inexplicable circumstance
tormented me terribly. On the 9th of October, in the evening, we reached
Hamburg.

What was the astonishment of Martha, what the joy of Gretchen! I will
not attempt to define it.

"Now then, Harry, that you really are a hero," she said, "there is no
reason why you should ever leave me again."

I looked at her. She was weeping tears of joy.

I leave it to be imagined if the return of Professor Hardwigg made or
did not make a sensation in Hamburg. Thanks to the indiscretion of
Martha, the news of his departure for the interior of the earth had been
spread over the whole world.

No one would believe it--and when they saw him come back in safety they
believed it all the less.

But the presence of Hans and many stray scraps of information by degrees
modified public opinion.

Then my uncle became a great man and I the nephew of a great man, which,
at all events, is something. Hamburg gave a festival in our honor. A
public meeting of the Johanneum Institution was held, at which the
Professor related the whole story of his adventures, omitting only the
facts in connection with the compass.

That same day he deposited in the archives of the town the document he
had found written by Saknussemm, and he expressed his great regret that
circumstances, stronger than his will, did not allow him to follow the
Icelandic traveler's track into the very centre of the earth. He was
modest in his glory, but his reputation only increased.

So much honor necessarily created for him many envious enemies. Of
course they existed, and as his theories, supported by certain facts,
contradicted the system of science upon the question of central heat, he
maintained his own views both with pen and speech against the learned of
every country. Although I still believe in the theory of central heat, I
confess that certain circumstances, hitherto very ill defined, may
modify the laws of such natural phenomena.

At the moment when these questions were being discussed with interest,
my uncle received a rude shock--one that he felt very much. Hans,
despite everything he could say to the contrary, quitted Hamburg; the
man to whom we owed so much would not allow us to pay our deep debt of
gratitude. He was taken with nostalgia; a love for his Icelandic home.

"Farval," said he, one day, and with this one short word of adieu, he
started for Reykjavik, which he soon reached in safety.

We were deeply attached to our brave eider-duck hunter. His absence will
never cause him to be forgotten by those whose lives he saved, and I
hope, at some not distant day, to see him again.

To conclude, I may say that our journey into the interior of the earth
created an enormous sensation throughout the civilized world. It was
translated and printed in many languages. All the leading journals
published extracts from it, which were commentated, discussed, attacked,
and supported with equal animation by those who believed in its
episodes, and by those who were utterly incredulous.

Wonderful! My uncle enjoyed during his lifetime all the glory he
deserved; and he was even offered a large sum of money, by Mr. Barnum,
to exhibit himself in the United States; while I am credibly informed by
a traveler that he is to be seen in waxwork at Madame Tussaud's!

But one care preyed upon his mind, a care which rendered him very
unhappy. One fact remained inexplicable--that of the compass. For a
learned man to be baffled by such an inexplicable phenomenon was very
aggravating. But Heaven was merciful, and in the end my uncle was happy.

One day, while he put some minerals belonging to his collection in
order, I fell upon the famous compass and examined it keenly.

For six months it had lain unnoticed and untouched.

I looked at it with curiosity, which soon became surprise. I gave a loud
cry. The Professor, who was at hand, soon joined me.

"What is the matter?" he cried.

"The compass!"

"What then?"

"Why its needle points to the south and not to the north."

"My dear boy, you must be dreaming."

"I am not dreaming. See--the poles are changed."

"Changed!"

My uncle put on his spectacles, examined the instrument, and leaped with
joy, shaking the whole house.

A clear light fell upon our minds.

"Here it is!" he cried, as soon as he had recovered the use of his
speech, "after we had once passed Cape Saknussemm, the needle of this
compass pointed to the southward instead of the northward."

"Evidently."

"Our error is now easily explained. But to what phenomenon do we owe
this alteration in the needle?"

"Nothing more simple."

"Explain yourself, my boy. I am on thorns."

"During the storm, upon the Central Sea, the ball of fire which made a
magnet of the iron in our raft, turned our compass topsy-turvy."

"Ah!" cried the Professor, with a loud and ringing laugh, "it was a
trick of that inexplicable electricity."

From that hour my uncle was the happiest of learned men, and I the
happiest of ordinary mortals. For my pretty Virland girl, abdicating her
position as ward, took her place in the house in the Konigstrasse in the
double quality of niece and wife.

We need scarcely mention that her uncle was the illustrious Professor
Hardwigg, corresponding member of all the scientific, geographical,
mineralogical, and geological societies of the five parts of the globe.

End of the Voyage Extraordinaire